Halo: Cloaked Shield
by Darkness Blackens
Summary: The UNSC and the Sangheili Empire has been at peace for 16 years when a group of former Covenant Remnant defies this peace. When ONI tags retreating CR ships back to an uncharted system in unexplored space, a select group of prowlers, manned by UNSC and SE forces, are ordered to pursue. What they uncover is nothing short of mythological and secrets that was never to be uncovered...
1. Prologue: Nothing But Ocean

**Authors Note and Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or My Little Pony. They belong to Bungie/Microsoft/343 Industries and Hasbro respectfully. Not my first hand at a story but first at a crossover. THIS IS AU. ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. This is a 'WHAT IF' not a 'WHAT SHOULD' crossover.**

**Please take heed. This is a prologue, its short for a reason. Enjoy. **

* * *

**Prologue: Nothing But Ocean **

It was a cold moonless night; the stars were out lighting up the sky like shimmering glitter from the gods themselves as the winds calmly pushed the merchant ship across the calm glass like sea. It was almost midnight by his reckoning, his rounds on the foredeck almost over.

He thought to himself like any sailor would do, for the night shift this was one of those duties that it would've been important to stay alert at all times, but however without a single sign of trouble, piracy or otherwise, it was a time to breath the cool salty air and watch the beautiful northern lightshow, notably vibrant purple and rose red dominating over the other colours.

It was wondrous.

He turned and left the bow of the ship heading for the helm when the ship itself shook like a thing possessed. He ran back to the railing so see what the ship supposedly hit. As he looked over the railing his eyes opened wide in shock as the calm sea it was no longer but it had become raging one.

He looked up to the sky. It too wasn't the only thing that had changed.

Storm clouds began obscuring the stars above as lighting forked overhead, the sails billowing in the light display as the slashing rain roared in from the side.

Most of the crew were now awake rushing to their duties. A strong spray of water caught one of them in the face that sent him hurtling into the mizzenmast with a sickening _crunch_. One thought crossed the Pegasus's mind '_Impossible_'.

The boat rocked as a large wave smashed into its port side, the wood groaning under the tremendous force as the resulting water cascaded over the railing. The crew tried desperately to rein in their behemoth as another large wave forced it to tilt dangerously to starboard.

The captain tried his best to save his ship by counter steering in the opposite direction. It only prolonged the inevitable.

When it swung to port, the largest monstrous wave the crew ever had seen loomed over the them like the shadow of a mountain over an ant.

The towering wave came crashing down, penetrating through the deck like it was made of balsa wood and splintered the once majestic merchant ship in half. All whom were aboard, all 43 of them, surrendered their will to the vast sea as the bisected ship slipped beneath the wild waves.


	2. Chapter 1: Darker Than Night

******Authors Note and Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or My Little Pony. They belong to Bungie/Microsoft/343 Industries and Hasbro respectfully. **

**THIS IS AU - ALTERNATE UNIVERSE, e****njoy reading.**

* * *

**Chapter 1: Darker Than Night**

**On-board UNSC Heavy Prowler **_**Echo of Stars**_**, lead ship of scout group Dark Razor, seven minutes until Slipspace transition, 2340 Hours, October 07, 2581 [UNSC/SE Military Calendar]**

They were out here for a reason, everyone aboard and the two other ships knew what was going on. They knew the mission, what it entailed. They were to follow a beacon that was supposedly attached to the outer hull of a Covenant Remnant SDV-Heavy Corvette, arrive in a supposed system and observe their positions until the follow-up fleet arrived.

Captain Marcus Schreiber pinched the ridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger thinking deeply.

'_That's the whole reason we're out here. Isn't it?'_

Marcus gazed up towards the front view screen, the emptiness of subspace apparent. There was nothing to see in subspace, no stars, no planets, nothing but just the inky blackness dominating it all. A soft toned voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Captain, the coordinates from the probe show we are approaching the systems outer rim," replied the _**Echo of Stars**_ smart AI.

'_Here we go' _Marcus got up from his captains chair and began issuing orders.

"Communications alert Commander Allencourt of the _**Howling Dark**_ and Captain Cosgrove of the _**Deepest Trench**_ to prepare for their transitions."

"Aye sir."

"Full power to the counter sensor array, lock ablative baffles, recheck engine dampers." Marcus began as he looked over his crew they started making absolutely sure that the _**Echo**_ _**of Stars**_ continued to remain invisible when they exited. The professionalism of his well-experienced crew sounded off his commands.

"Ablative baffles locked…"

"Engine dampers holding steady in the negative…"

"Array online…"

"Standby." With that he rolled up his left sleeve to look at his watch. The crew had their eyes transfixed to their screens, ready to take action and relay anything at a moments notice.

"In 4… 3… 2… _Mark._"

There was a wash of electric blue as it travelled over each the ships as they exited subspace, the stars snapping into view, a yellow star blazing to their three o'clock and a blue gas giant obscuring the view to their right.

"Transition successful captain." The AI responded.

"Navigation, new course, seven-seven-two by zero-six-zero, three quarter full. Weapons, engage texture buffers."

From the outside the ship began to fade, covered in many interlocking hexagonal shapes over the hull, the ship abruptly slipped into nothingness replaced by the backdrop of the pinpricks of stars. A slight distortion marked out the shape of the ship; you could only pick it out if you knew it was there, what it was, and if you were right in front of it when it vanished.

The _Echo_ had become the night and the night belonged to her and the two accompanying Razor-class Prowlers that followed suite.

"Aye sir, answering to new heading." The NAV crewmember calmly whispered out. _**Echo of stars**_ began moving to her new heading as her other accompanying prowlers split away to their own headings.

It was recommended to alter course after transitioning from slipspace in case some telltale sign of their appearance gave their position away, especially when the ship in question was a prowler. No matter how well, stealth wise, equipped the ship was. It still was the most slowest, underpowered and poorly armed vessels in the UNSC fleet. As one of the weapons officers signalled that the texture buffers were operating normally, a rather large shape walked into the captain's peripheral vision.

The _Echo's_ XO or executive officer, a Sangheili Commander by the name of Thel 'Surumee, his uniform or personal combat armour was coated in a dark grey and looked almost like onyx in the low light as he walked to the metal table situated in the centre of the bridge.

"Carmen," he addressed the table in a gravelly deep voice.

The holotable in the centre of the prowler's bridge began to glow a soft grey, and materialising with it was the form of another Sangheili. To the crew of the _Echo of Stars_ it was a welcome change that even the captain liked her. Carmen appeared light grey in colour and wore combat armour but it was more, for a lack of a better term, 'compact' when compared to the combat armour worn by the typical male Sangheili. If one was to look more closely she carried on her left hip to what looked like some type of weapon, a curved blade of sorts.

"Yes Commander." she responded.

"Situation update."

"All systems green across the board. BLACK WIDOW CS thermal cool downs initiated. STARs one through seven ready to launch. _**Deepest Trench**_ and _**Howling Dark**_ report they are set and green."

"What type of system is it?" Marcus questioned the AI.

The holotable lit up and began showing a large sphere in the systems center along with a few other smaller spheres circling it.

"Single white-yellow sun with four planets orbiting, the second and sixth orbital bodies are gas giants, there also is a rather large asteroid belt between the third and fourth planets."

At he mention of the asteroid belt Marcus could see the strategic importance it meant for his scout group immediately, he turned to his Nav. Officer. "Navigation, plot new course for the asteroid belt."

"Aye sir."

"What else do you see?" Thel asked.

Carmen paused as she passively scanned the system. "…No Covenant Remnant signals detected."

_That… can't be right,_ Marcus slowly thought._ The __**Echo of Stars **__has the best of the best sensor suite; it even rivalled the one currently fitted out on the __**UNSC Infinity**__._

Marcus perched up his right eyebrow quizzingly, as he looked over to Carmen's podium. "Are you sure?"

"There are no signals correlating to those used by them I can pick out. Although I'm picking out some multiple distortions above one particular planet, the third from the systems star."

"What kind of distortions?"

"If I was to initiate a deep scan to properly answer your question, whatever it is, it will know our position, perhaps worse."

"Well, what can you tell us about it without doing so?"

Carmen's avatar materialized a data pad out from behind her back. "The distortions correlate to an observational battle report that occurred in the late year of 2552. Designated here," She said, tapping the pad. "As Spire One through Three."

Marcus knew exactly what the AI was talking about. Even though he knew she could've gotten the relevant data, ONI and HIGHCOM still held many secrets, even from their now close allies.

"Cloaking Spires? The only time we saw those deployed en masse was…"

"Reach sir." replied one of his intelligence officers.

The mere utterance of the answer sent a chill throughout the entire bridge. Those particular spires in question bore most of the blame when the Covenant first arrived on Reach. Just one spire could basically hide anything; from a mass of Phantom Troop Carriers to a single twenty seven-kilometer long CSO Super Carrier, they could even mask large slipspace jumps.

Thel turned back to the holotable, he uttered one word. "Where."

Carmen disappeared from her podium as she transferred herself to the holotable. "Pulling up long range system scan of the third orbital body…"

* * *

The forest closed in as she ran as fast as she could in the frigid cold night, the pursuing unrelenting growls drawing ever closer. She cried out in horror as she passed through the thick brush bordering the forest and into a scene from hell itself.

The town before her was engulfed in flames as the night sky above danced with dangerous colour, blurred purple shapes and thick black smoke. She fell to the ground breathless and began to shiver and shakily cry in the cold night air. They had come when the night had begun, slaughtered everything and everyone where they stood, their burning purple beams cutting swaths through the cities like a blowtorch to wax paper.

*_Snap*_

The sound of something stepping on a twig roused her from her thoughts. She turned slowly around fearfully as a large four-fingered hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed her neck, halting any further movement that she made as it lifted her off the ground.

The owner of the hand brought her face up to face its own. She looked wide-eyed in fear at the beings helmeted head, its four-mandible mouth jutting out as it growled at her. She tried to struggle free from its grip as it thrust something forward with its other hand.

Horrendous stabbing pain ate from within her body. She barely had the strength to look down to notice a long lightning blue object lodged in her chest. She tried to scream but nothing came, instead she tasted copper inside her mouth. It was blood. HER blood.

The being withdrew the blue blade and tossed her aside, letting her fall unceremoniously to the ground in a broken heap, blood starting to seep from the corners of her mouth. Her last thoughts were of her family as the darkness slowly consumed her vision.


	3. Chapter 2: The Oncoming Storm

**Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or My Little Pony. They belong to Bungie/Microsoft/343 Industries and Hasbro respectfully. **

**********[06/2014] Edit: I've gone and re-wrote the parts about the explanation of the 'other' jammers and the fortress in this chapter in order to fix one major plot error [Pointed out by Major Simi. Thanks] and speed pacing. Reasons behind this are that I wasn't thinking with my head on straight like I should've been, thus created said errors. Hopefully I haven't jumped the safety rail on this one.**

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**Chapter 2: The Oncoming Storm**

**Heavy Prowler **_**Echo of Stars**_**, unnamed system's asteroid field, PRIMARY CRYO BAY, 0025 Hours, October 08, 2581 [UNSC/SE Military Calender]**

The frigid cold air tickled his burning lungs as he tried to open his eyes, as he did he thought he caught the blurred shape of something standing in front of him.

"Take a deep breath and swallow." Said the blurred image.

He did as suggested. However it had the immediate sudden effect to make him collapse to the deck and violently cough up the long white surfactant from his burning lungs onto the cold metal deck in front of the still blurred image.

He began to draw horse-ragged breaths as he struggled to get oxygen rich blood circulating through his body.

"Now that's no way to treat a lady." Replied the blurred image.

_That voice… it couldn't be. _He began to blink rapidly, clearingthe blurry haze from his vision and looked up. Standing in front of him, recently out of cryo with a military cut red haired woman who was decked out in full black with orange details its photo-reactive panels turned off, MJOLNIR PAA (Gen 2) armour Pathfinder-class minus the helmet.

Commander Maria Williams, his commanding officer.

Maria cracked a grin as she watched Michael scramble from his kneeling position to attention. That grin immediately vanished from her face as his eyes almost drew level with hers.

"Commander!" Michael said, raising his hand quickly in salute.

"At ease Spartan. Get to the armoury and get your armour on. We've arrived and the Captain wants us in the debriefing room and that was seven minutes ago, step to it." Maria said bluntly and then gracefully turned on her heel, she moved with such fluidity considering the armour weighed close to half a ton, and walked for the bulkhead door that lead to the hanger and armoury and from there, the debriefing room and observation deck. As she exited the cryo bay, the door slid shut behind her with a weighted _thump_.

Michael sighed in relief as he let out the breath he was holding in. _First day on the job and you go spew that disgusting mixture almost over your own boss's armour. Nice._

He began to check over his titanium nanocomposite bodysuit. The suit that connects all the external armour to his body, it also affords that little extra protection from ballistic and plasma based weaponry. For any problems that arise now it will greatly hinder the attachment of his armour, a delay he didn't want to have.

With the visual checks complete, Michael immediately turned left for the armoury and in a few quick strides he reached the bulkhead door. The door sensing his presence, slid open allowing him passage from the chilly cryo bay into the short hallway leading to the hangar.

* * *

On a prowler, even the new Sahara heavy, space was a luxury, so it came a bit of surprise to see the gunship version of the pelican crammed inside. Floating above was the resident Huragok, Easily Adjusted or EJ for short and right in front of the pelican was the twenty-seven marines that are stationed on board, covered in black body armour and signing an old cadence 'Hard Work' with out-dated lyrics while doing star jumps.

He walked over and into the armoury on the other side of the hangar. The weathered face of the quartermaster looked up from his bent over position, a cleaning rag in his hand and a rifle barrel in the other, along with a cheesy smile on his face.

"Ah, Spartan Michael Lorenski. I was wondering when I would see you. Oh and before you ask, Maria came through and said the Captain wants you in the debriefing room in fifteen minutes."

_Commander, you big…_

"Don't worry, there will be enough time to check your targeting systems and shields. Anyway, my name is Nickoli but the crew just calls me Nick. The crate containing your armour is just over there." He said, jerking his thumb over to a large grey crate that sat on one of the tables. "Just place the pieces in the assembly gizmo, hop in, call me and I'll begin the short ride that'll attach them in place." Nick said as he turned back around to continue cleaning the rifle barrel.

Michael walked over to the crate and took off the lid that contained his customised armour it was coloured almost entirely in black with grey details. The Gen 2 of the MJOLNIR PAA/R or Recon variant with selective photo-reactive panels integrated into the armour, not quite full invisibility but it gets the job done in a pinch. Nestled beside his recon helmet was his competition helmet, his pride and joy. Designed mainly for its outstanding looks, it was the helmet for the FOTUS armour set minus the horn spike. The team he played on, won one helmet each after finishing first in a brutal hard fought Ricochet competition on Earth in Kirkland, Washington.

He carefully placed his Recon armour into the placeholders of the armour assembly machine. When he was done he stepped in and called Nick over saying he was ready.

"Alright, lets get this show of force in motion." Nick said in a jokingly manner as he placed his hand on an activation symbol on the holographic tablet he was holding.

The machine whirred as it assembled his gauntlets and boots on first, it spun him horizontally as it applied his torso and leg armour, it spun back vertically so that he was once again standing as it lowered his helmet with an orange tinted visor into place. Michael stepped out of the assembly, flexing his armoured fingers. It felt great to get back into his armour. It always felt like a second home to him.

"Ok, lets check your targeting systems shall we?" Nick said as Michael came to a stop in front of him.

Nick held his holopad above his head, a green dot showing on it "Alright can you look up here please."

Michael looked at the holopad, the green circle turned red.

"Ok, now down here. Uh huh, now back up."

He continued to follow the holopad wherever Nick held it.

"Alright everything checks out. Now Michael, step over here and lets get that shielding online."

Michael walked over to Nick to what looked like an upside down tuning fork. Mike stepped in between said 'fork' and looked at Nick.

"Alright, hold still." He said as he tapped another symbol his the data pad.

The two prongs began to spin around Michael slow at first it then sped its motion up faster as he began to smell ozone, there was a small _pop_, a shrill beeping sound in his head followed by the cool sound of recharging shields.

"Bingo, all is good Michael. Your reactor accepted it, no problems. We'll go through with weapons later, you're needed in the debrief room in two minutes, no rush."

"Thanks, by the way you can call me Mike." He said through his helmet speakers.

"Alright Mike, I'll be seeing you and the others later with a few surprises."

Michael nodded his head in understanding and left.

* * *

His walk down the hall was uneventful, he got there in time to see Captain Schreiber and his XO Thel 'Surumee enter through a door that supposably led to the bridge. Commander Williams had her helmet on, the orange visor looking over at the captain as Michael came beside her.

"Commander Williams, Lieutenant Lorenski." The Captain nodded as he acknowledged both Spartans. "Good to see you up and ready."

The Captain then turned to the blank holotable.

"Carmen, are you there?"

"When am I not always here Captain?" She replied teasingly, projecting her avatar from it.

"Fair point. Alright you know the drill."

The AI activated the holotable and began projecting a system full of planets, which then zoomed to the third one along with its moon.

"As of the date of October eighth, twenty five eighty one, under section three protocol six eighty-six. Anything shown or leaked in this debriefing to the public will be punishable by treason and execution/termination immediately without trial." Everyone in the room gave a curt nod, including one shadowy figure in one of the corners, acknowledging the information.

The holotable resumed to show the planets surface, it had the colours of what you would see if you observed Earth, there were three main continents. Two of them were situated close to the northern pole while the third continent that looked like Africa and South America overlapped together but sideways, was on the other side of the planet. Halfway between the southern pole and the equator were chains of small islands scatted throughout the planets seas.

"The planet you see here is very similar to Earths rotational spin and orbit, so much is similar that when compared to earth's day and night cycle it comes to exactly twenty four hours, twelve day and twelve night."

"So what you're saying is that this planet here," Michael said as he pointed to the hologram. "Day and night cycle matches exactly up with Earths time?"

"Correct."

The holotable zoomed to the two continents to the north. One of them looked like the Republic of Russia, which was covered with distortions while the other looking like Europe, had different interferences.

"This continent, the one that is covered in distortions is the result of mass deployments of cloak teleport spires. I'll send the relevant information on them to your neural interfaces."

The two Spartans nodded as they got the data.

"As the info I've given you, you can see how big they are, their defences and their role they present."

Maria and Michael's helmets shifted slightly as they read up to the part of said 'Spires' that showed a single one could cloak an entire CSO Super Carrier.

"Due to this one continent being covered with this many 'distortions' it is clear that this particular planet is extremely interesting to them and their followers. Now this continent here," The holotable switched to the second northern landmass. "We can see different distortions. With our sensor suite and the information gathered, it is to be believed that they are minor staging areas. We do not know what for but their locations are troublesome and we wont have a proper 'beachhead' to set up bases and stage our own attack against the Remnant when our task force arrives to clean up this mess. That is why you're dropping in."

"Now I have good news and bad news."

"Good news is there is a massive storm that is blanketing over the second continent as we speak. The storm will act as your cover as you drop in, bad news is you're going in blind to the target drop." She pointed out to what looked like a large patch of dark green on the holotable, she then switched the display to seriously distorted sections of the map.

"Apparently these," flicking her finger out to the distorted sections, "so called 'Jammers' are the reason why you're blind dropping. They're some type of dark zone generators that we've never before seen, that distort any image we're getting from our deployed Stealth Tactical Aerial Reconnaissance Satellite. Which in this case is the unrecognisable pixilation you see here, their area of effect is also quite large and envelope most of the continent with their range. They're also happen to be disrupting our ships targeting computers for the pulse lasers, making any attempt to target them nigh impossible."

"So, we're being sent down in a storm, early morning, trek through an unexplored - unmapped area, assuming its a forest, pinpoint the locations for the dark zones and then laser them as targets for when the fleet eventually arrives to do an quick orbital strike?" Maria questioned.

"Correct."

"So, it will be just both myself and this other Spartan." She said, gesturing to where Michael stood.

"No."

The voice didn't come from Carmen or the captain. It was the _**Echo**_'s XO, Thel 'Surumee. Commander of the five SpecOps Sangheili stationed on board all the three prowlers. The Captain stood aside to let him pass.

"No, it will not be just the two of you." Thel continued as he came to a stop at the holotable.

"Sir?" Maria questioned warily to the Captain, having not been briefed earlier about the action.

"It has already been decided Maria. Along with Captain Cosgrove, Commander Allencourt, our not so lenient Major Hwan and myself have decided that you will be accompanied, but under your command," The captain gestured to the corner to his right. "Special Operations Xytas 'Doravoai."

The shadow in the corner stepped forward, revealing said Sangheili, covered from head to toe in SpecOp armour in the deepest red possible, and to the Spartans eyes it closely represented dried human blood, with a blue visor. The Sangheili came to a halt beside the holotable. Compared to the two Spartans in height they both stood close to seven foot three while the elite was seven foot six. Maria could see an energy sword hilt on his left leg.

Xytas placed his arm across his chest and lowered his head. "It is but an honour to serve alongside such an accomplished commander."

"It is a honour in itself to serve alongside an outstanding warrior of great swordsmanship." Maria said as she complimented on his title.

Michael didn't say anything.

"Its zero one hundred hours now and your show starts at oh two hundred. I suggest you head to Nickoli the quartermaster, he seems to have gotten some shipment of weapons in that I'm sure you will be dying to use. Maria, Lorenski, Xytas, you are dismissed."

"Sir!" The two Spartans saluted, Xytas just nodding his head.

The Captain nodded and left the room with his XO in tow.

"Walk with me boys, a brief introduction is in order for the both of you. Lorenski, you're up first." She already read both their profiles, minus the black ink of Michael's career and the long service record of Xytas that Carmen sent forward, but wanted to hear it from them firsthand.

"Michael 'Mike' Lorenski. Lieutenant. Heavy weapons and demolition. Served in the UNSC Marine Corps now serving in the Spartan IV Corps. Born on Luna, County of Newton." Michael said. The door leading into the hallway from the briefing room cycled open allowing them passage to the hall.

Marias head swivelled briefly to the Sangheili as they walked down the empty passage. "Your turn."

"Xytas 'Doravoai, Master Swordsman and Sniper, Sangheili Special Operations, Sanghelios, Doravo Keep." He said, straight and plain.

Maria came to a halt in front of the door leading into the armoury. "Ok. All you need to know about me is that I served in the corps, that I'm your commanding officer and that you will follow my orders."

"Yes Commander." Both of them said in union.

Maria tapped the pad next to the door. "Good."

The door slid open revealing Nick, standing next to the middle table with EJ floating just behind it. On top of the table were rifles of some make and off to the side were small pieces of disassembled Promethean vision, active camouflage and hardlight shield modules.

"Welcome all to a great show I'm gonna give you. Come round, come round." Nick said as the two Spartans and the sangheili gathered around his table. Nicks hand reached out and picked up what looked like a human medium sized rifle mixed with forerunner tech.

"This," He began. "Is the ex-em-three-eighty assault rifle de-emm-arr hybrid and this," He said pointing to a longer rifle. "Is the ex-em one-hundred and ten ess-ten sniper rifle, they are both made specifically for the use by Spartans and Special operations Sangheili. Why? Well, I don't know how they did it but," He casually flicked off the safety of the XM380, aimed it at Mike's chest and pulled the trigger.

Michael braced himself for the hit but surprisingly nothing came.

"They won't work without a power source they can draw on. No mags required." He said flicking the safety back on. "Which is why you three can use them. They will draw power from your reactor safely even when you're using active camouflage, just use caution, you'll be able to get off a few shots before the continuous fire will deactivate your cameo and they can overheat, so don't go burning your fingers off."

Nick gently put down the XM380 back on the table and motioned EJ to come over.

EJ let off a soft trill as it moved over to Xytas's back with two small pieces in its tentacles and started to fiddle with something that the two Spartans couldn't see. Xytas stood still, not moving an inch as the engineer did what it needed to do. There was a spark followed by the resounding joyous chirp from EJ as it moved away from Xytas's back and over to the two Spartans.

Xytas began moving, flexing his hands and looking over his body, trying to see what improvements it had done. Nick filled in the details as his data pad hummed with a message from EJ.

"EJ says that your active camouflage integrated into your armour the power consumption for it, has been reduced so you can spend more time being invisible and from the numbers EJ has given me, its tripled the total time from two hours to six hours as a bonus you will be able to sprint short distances without being seen with it active, however this will consume additional power." Under his helmet, unseen by anyone, Xytas's jaws pressed into slight smile. "EJ has also upgraded your visor software allowing you to see around behind objects, such as a wall or tree, the thinner the object the better. Your shielding has also been given a boost with an added hardlight barrier. It'll only activate when your shielding goes down after that your armour starts taking hits."

EJ moved up to the two Spartans backs as it emitted another soft trill as it worked its amazing engineering skills. EJ chirped again as it finished its job on the Spartans.

"The same things EJ did have been done the same to the both of you." Nick looked to his watch.

"Its 0140, time to get to work" Nick walked over to one of the gun racks and brought out two more XM380's and one more XM110-S10 and placed them on the table. He then thumbed a button on his data pad automatically opening all the other gun racks which contained every human and sangheili empire known weapons. "Pick your poison."

The three of them each attached an XM380 to their backs. Mike went over and picked out a Galilean Nonlinear Rifle or mostly referred to as a Spartan laser, along with a silenced M6C/SOCOM sidearm.

Maria and Xytas both picked up one of the two XM110-S10s with Maria also picking up a silenced M6C while Xytas took and placed a plasma pistol on his right leg clamp.

"Scout Raptor six?" An ODST in full combat gear said as she leaned into the armoury.

"Yes, that's us." Said Maria as she turned to acknowledge the soldier.

"Follow me, your drop is ready."

The three of them followed the female ODST out into the hangar, one of the hangar walls retracted revealing larger than usual modified SOEIVs; three of them had their doors lifted open.

The three of them got to one each placing their bigger weapons into the weapon holders inside. Maria got in the middle one, Xytas in the left-hand one and Michael in the right-hand one.

The SOEIV doors slid shut and locked. The three of them could hear the steady reverberating _vmmm _as the drop doors retracted.

The intercom crackled to life.

"The _**Echo**_ is ready and in position above the planet. We've deployed both a BLACK WIDOW SATCOM and one STARS into a geostationary orbit close to where you're dropping in, once you hit dirt link up through them. With STARS linked with the BLKWDW, it should be powerful enough to break through the dark zones you pass through when you link up. Oh and when you guys get down there, be sure to send them our regards. We'll be watching you from on high." A female voice filtered in from the tiny speakers.

Maria switched to the squad's comms, calling out in an upbeat manner.

"People, we are dropping in and I'm sure as hell ain't hosing out your pods!"

The countdown was quick, the feeling of the ground giving way beneath their feet as the pods rocketed out towards the worlds clouded stormy atmosphere to their drop zone.

* * *

A storm had rolled in making targeting the invading beasts worse; the mountainous cliffs the fortress was situated in didn't help either. The now limited ammunition for their bolt action rifles and cannons had to be used carefully otherwise it was going to be up close, hand-to-hand combat with the monsters, something he or his few remaining soldiers left in the stronghold would rather not do.

He had seen what would happen first hand, he witnessed one of his soldiers go up close to one of the big tall ones with his service issue steel sword. The beast had menacingly laughed as it cut through his own soldier's sword not even meeting any resistance with its glowing blue one, it ended swiftly with his soldiers decapitated head falling to the ground after one swipe.

They took the entire kingdom by surprise, their machines of war flooded through their defences with ease. They had numerous gigantic purple flying ships the size of mountains using terrifying heat based weapons to level the cities into burning bonfires. He grimaced as he watched a pair of medics cart a grievously burned but still alive griffon from the defending wall. There was only one possible chance they had left, by the heavens, he hoped it was the right choice. He turned and picked out one of his soldiers in the fort.

"Gwen, I need you to get a message out to the princesses of Equestria." He shouted over the pouring rain, the sounds of battle intensifying outside the fortress walls punctuated by wounded soldiers calling out for help.

"Tell them we need their help, if they don't believe you take this." He said as he placed a small round brown box in one of her satchel bags.

"I don't care about what happened in the past or what our current relationship with them are, if we fall there is nothing anyone can do stop these beasts. Get them to help no matter what the cost."

He noticed her head was looking around at the rain trampled muddy ground still littered with dead comrades; she was shaking in fear, tears forming in her eyes.

"We can't change what has happened here," he said placing his hand onto her shoulder and lifting her eyes to meet his. "But you can change the future with the message for our continued existence," He could see she had stopped shaking but saw she was still in tears. "Look, you're the best flier here I know. I need you to do this, for all the species on this world, even for m-"

*_Shlat_*

His head disappeared in a puff of red, the rest of his body just stood there for a few moments before toppling over into the mud with a splash. Gwen looked up in horror from her fallen commander and friend. Hovering above the wall was a flying purple machine of war that looked like a large beetle she had never yet seen before. There was a bird like creature standing by its open door, a long rifle held up to its shoulder, deep purple steam flowing out from its muzzle. In one fleeting second she immediately understood the importance of the message, they couldn't do this alone.

There was frantic pained screaming coming from the walls as the large flying machine opened fire on the defending griffin soldiers in strobes of red and blue. The wall gate exploded open in a terrifying green flash, the smoke cleared quickly allowing the griffins to see two even larger creatures clad in heavy dull green armour. Their left arms glowing and a large shield on the other, large spines protruded from their back. The creatures were bigger than any griffon here had seen, roughly the size of a large boulder.

The two creatures bellowed out a rumbling growl that was felt through their chests rather than heard, raised their green glowing arms at a grouping of griffon soldiers reading to fire their rifles after reloading. There was an odd _whump_ sound accompanied by another green blinding flash and all that was left was a smouldering crater were the soldiers once stood, they were completely vaporised. A griffon soldier came at the hulking green beast's from the side only to be cleaved messily in two by the thing's thick shield it had swung at the griffon.

It all happened in a blink of an eye. Gwen turned and ran readying her wings for the long flight. More of the tall clad blue armour beasts poured through the gates firing at anything that looked like a griffon. One of the tall blue armour clad enemy tossed a blue fuzzy ball at a grouping of griffons, the blue ball stuck fast to the one of the their wings. The griffon tried desperately to get it off only to vanish in a flash of blue blinding light. Appearing from the rain soaked sky two smaller sleeker purple craft emerged and descended onto the fleeing griffons and began to strafe them with blue bolts of fire.

With a great bounding leap, Gwen took to the skies leaving the now burning fallen old fortress behind. The two smaller craft saw her leave and gave chase, blasting blue plasma after her. Gwen panicked and dove for the ground. The two small craft easily stayed just behind her, flashes of lightning forked through the clouds striking one of the purple craft, shutting down its engines and making it plummet out of the sky. The pilot in the remaining craft squeezed at the flight controls spewing forth more burning plasma at his fleeing quarry.

She painfully yelped out as some of the bolts burned away at her lightly armoured back legs. Through the stormy night sky she saw a gap in the mountain pass that she believed she could fit though and hopefully the flying machine following her couldn't.

She tucked her wings in as she passed through the small gap, the purple craft pulled up hard, just making it over the mountain ridge, the pilot pounced on the clueless griffon, thinking she had escaped the flying predator.

She rolled over once more for another dive to the deck as more plasma singed away at her flanks. As she came through a thick cloud she managed to pull up in a hover just in time to feel the cold salty ocean spray into her face. A loud screeching sound came from above her, she looked above her just in time to see the blurred shape of purple craft careen into the water in a great splash mere feet from her. The pilot attempted a suicide run. With the adrenalin from the shock of being pursued subsiding within after the last ditch attempt of her pursuer, Gwen looked around herself making sure the coat was clear. Satisfied there was nothing else following her, she turned and headed to the land of Equestria.

It felt like forever as she flew over the ocean as it stretched away from her in all directions, so it came as a relief when she finally flew over the great sandy beaches of of the continent. Off in the rain swept distance she could see the mountainous ranges that held the location to the palace of the princesses. Beat, tired and in pain, she needed a place to rest her badly hurt body before continuing her mission. While flying over a forest she spied a statue of sorts. As she landed near it, she remembered what it represented. It was the great statute of when Luna was called Nightmare back then, one thousand years of darkness. If she remembered correctly.

With her sides burning in pain as the rain fell on it, she took one last cautioned look around as she lied down beside the statue. As her eyes closed to sleep, the repeated images of her captain dying before her eyes continuously looped as she dreamt.

* * *

**A/N: Well that was wild ride... sort of. The length of the crossover chapters for the rest of the progression of the story is going to be just as long just like this one maybe more when I start getting into the thick of it. **

**Those first two chapters (The prologue and CH1: DTN) were just spur of the moment type writing, basically typed down and out there, but don't worry, i've already got a '_Story Board_' down and ready.**

** Be sure to leave a review and to point out the mistakes and or plot-holes (I do all proof reading myself), so i can rectify them with an explanation in later chapters.**


	4. Chapter 3: Of Rain Swept Paths

**********Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or My Little Pony. They belong to Bungie/Microsoft/343 Industries and Hasbro respectfully. **

* * *

**Chapter 3: Of Rain Swept Paths **

**Xytas's SOEIV, Dark forest in a lightning storm, planets surface, 0216, October 8 2581 [UNSC/SE Military Calender]**

The pouring rain evaporated off in white steamy wisps as it came into contact with the still hot from re-entry SOEIV, where it had landed upon the side of a steep hill.

The door of the pod had failed to open up on impact with the ground like it was designed to do, so instead he had to resort to priming the seven explosive bolts located within the pod that would blast it off, an easy thing to do… if he was human. He had to shift his body at least once in the tight confines of his pod, to get at a bolt that was being blocked by his armoured legs.

When the final bolt was primed, the door beeped twice, vented some steam, and ejected off its frame into the dark forest.

The ride down was smoother than Michael had expected, of course there was the occasional turbulence expected when the his pod, along with the others, passed through the storm layer and the bone crushing shocking halt when the pods hit dirt side.

As Michael hopped out of his pod, he noticed they had landed in a gully of sorts, a small river led away southwest to east along with a blanket of low mist. He reached into his pod to acquire his weapons and his medical kit. Even though they were in a squad supported by three orbiting prowlers, it was a necessity to bring along said gear each in case something went wrong. Which, like many cases, especially operations involving Spartans, did.

Michael was about to pick out and attach his armoured backpack onto to his back from within his pod, when he heard a dull muffled _thump_, along with a lot of breaking branches over the constant drenching noise of the thunderstorm. He turned to face were he thought the sound was coming from, just as a metal grey pod door came flying out from the treetops towards him. Michael dove backwards just in time as the door fell to the ground where he was standing mere moments ago, eventually coming to a sliding rest at his feet where he now stood.

Xytas had acquired his weapons and gear from his pod and walked down through the bushes to where his door had flew off to. As he emerged from the other side of the brush, he found a rather stunned green outline of a tall Spartan via his Visual Intelligence System Reconnaissance, with a Friend Or Foe tag of 'MIKE' displaying on his Heads Up Display just above the Spartans head.

He saw the Spartan, Mike, look up from the door towards him along with the distinct crackle of a male voice filtering over the comms.

"You do realise you could brain someone by doing that." said Michael.

Xytas looked at his removed pod door and slowly raised his shoulders up then down.

"Really? No famous Sangheili comeback"

"I do not know of this 'comeback' that you talk of Spartan." He said, still looking at the pod door.

Michael sighed and waved his hand in resignation. "You know what, just forget it, the time had passed anyway."

Xytas raised his head and flexed his jaws in confusion to ask what the Spartan meant by that, when a sudden loud _snap_ of something very heavy landed on a fallen branch close by in the dark confines of the forest. The two whirled around, expertly and calmly pointing their main weapons in the direction of the disturbance. Out of the darkness, one of the shadows moved to reveal an armour-clad figure, the panels on the armour blending into the surroundings almost perfectly, emerged into what little light that filtered in through the thick tree canopy, its weapon casually resting across its chest. Maria came to a slow halt when she saw her two teammates pointing their rifles at her helmeted face.

"Well, ain't this nice." She happily said.

"Apologies commander." Michael said, as he and Xytas lowered their weapons. "My radar seems to have not been able pick you up in this clutter."

He was referring to the constant moving motion of the trees in the stormy winds, which in turn was creating false contacts that showed up on their motion trackers.

"Shut it down, they will be useless here until this storm calms down."

There was no reply over the comms, instead she got two small green confirm lights that appeared in the bottom right corner her HUD.

"We need to get to a clearing in order for us to link up properly to our friends on high, because I'm not getting through in here. There was sizeable good spot just north east of here, close to a river I saw on the way down."

"I think I know of the river you are talking about commander and this creek over here," Michael turned and gestured with his weapon. "I think joins up with it."

Maria looked over to the creek. "Good thinking lieutenant."

She briefly turned her head vaguely in the direction of their SOEIV drop zone, then back again.

"Have you two got everything you need? Cause we're not coming back here in a hurry anytime soon."

Xytas looked over his shoulder to confirm his pack was still there, at the same time he did another pulse scan via his VISR of his surroundings. Satisfied there was nothing to be concerned about, he turned back to Maria. "I am ready Commander."

Maria slowly walked over to the small creek, kneeled and dipped her rifle tip into the flowing water.

Michael reached behind him and picked up his armoured backpack from the wet ground, which contained the teams basic survival rations, biofoam, three compact rod like devices, and several canisters of C7 foaming explosive. He gave it a good shouldering shake to make sure it didn't detach off his magnetic clamps back armour, the Spartan Laser that was attached along the right side of the pack didn't fall of either. "As am I commander."

Maria watched the water compress on the leading edge and flowed around the rifle tip causing a trail tail. She then compared the water trail with her internal compass. It did flow in a northerly east direction. Excellent. She pulled her rifle tip out of the water and stood up.

"I think our armour is pretty much clean now. Lets move." She said and turned to Michael. "Mike, you're on point."

Michael nodded and began to follow the creek downhill as his photo reactive panels incorporated into his armour began to blend in with the dark surroundings. Xytas followed in behind him while Maria took one more look around herself before following close behind them both.

* * *

"So, THAT is now the problem and THIS is the solution?" He asked her.

"Basically."

Captain Schreiber wasn't exactly thrilled of the fact, that their deployed STAR satellite stationed over the second continent, wasn't penetrating the thick rain clouds as able as it should've been, even if there were dark zones scattered across it, the paired link with the black widow should've negated that.

Carmen pointed out that the STARS on-board thermal package has had trouble with issues in the past. Notably, one particular incident involving bad weather was the 'Battle for Sigma Octanus IV', where the thermal package optics had trouble penetrating the frequent rainstorms that occurred over most of the planets surface, which gave out to false readings of enemy locations and terrain layouts to anyone observing. That significant problem he would not like to have repeated again.

There was a solution to said problem, but just not in the way he would've liked it to be. He just hoped that any noise produced by it would be mistaken as a long rumble of thunder to anything listening.

Marcus looked up to the centre view screen, he could see the marked prowler _**Deepest Trench**_ slowly slither through the blackness of space towards a waypoint, where it would deploy from its hangar one of the two F-99/S Wombat's into the upper atmosphere. The F-99/S Wombat, the 'S' standing for stealth, was covered in thin matte black stealth coating, was slightly slower than its basic design and it was well equipped with Infrared Night Vision, Laser Radar, Synthetic Aperture Radar and long-range optics.

Their prowlers already had these type of surveillance gear on-board but in order to utilise it, one had to de-cloak so that the images and scans came back clean and not distorted like the STAR satellite is currently transmitting back to them. Commander Cosgrove, captain of the prowler _**Deepest Trench**_, sharp voice came in over their ships comms.

"This is Commander Cosgrove to_** Echo of Stars**_. In one hour we will be in reach of the release waypoint." There was slight silent pause over the comms. "Is there any word from Raptor six at this time?"

"Negative. As soon as their pods dropped under the cloud cover the tracking beacons incorporated into their armour disappeared, we've been trying to re-establish connection ever since the signals dropped."

"Could it be the result of this severe storm we've been witnessing?"

Carmen took this opportunity to chime in with her analysis. "A strong possibility Commander." Her avatar sprung up from holo-terminal that stood next to the captain's chair. "Since the decision to use one of the Wombat drones for an up-close look, I took the opportunity of re-tasking STARS instead to analyse the storm and something… came up."

To make an AI to pause like that was rare but when it did happen, nothing good could come of it. "What have you found?" Cosgrove asked.

"Possibly the reason why STARS is having trouble getting us the valuable intelligence that we need."

* * *

The group had come to a narrow shallow bend in the creek surrounded by sheer tall cliffs, when Michael held his right hand up in a fist, slowly pointed to his ear and then flattened his hand horizontally towards the ground. _Halt, listen, and get down. _Maria and Xytas separated away from each other squatting slightly and began to listen. There was nothing but the constant patter of the rain falling to the ground, the deep reverberating sound of thunder overhead, and the trickle of water flowing over the rocks in the creek.

Almost two minutes had passed without incident. Xytas was about to key his comms when he saw the green outline shape of Michael get replaced by a dim white one. He switched off his VISR to confirm what he just witnessed. To the untrained eye, it looked like Michael had simply vanished into thin air, but in reality he had activated his active camouflage. The dim white outline that appeared in place of the green one on his HUD represented something was there, but it was invisible to the naked eye. Xytas quickly switched back on the VISR and activated his own active camouflage.

There was a deep _thud_, shortly followed by another one only closer this time, then another. Whatever it was, it sounded heavy, quite large and slowly coming towards them. As soon as Maria saw Michael vanish along with Xytas a few seconds later. She too followed suit. There was another _thud_, this time it was accompanied by what sounded like someone holding a bunch of sticks together and breaking them all at once. She knew they couldn't wait here for it to pass, as it would be nearing light soon, despite the storm.

She flashed her amber acknowledgement light twice then her green light to Michael._ Need to move out_. In response, she got one blue flash. _Copy._ She saw the dull white outline of Michael start to move slowly forwards when a red light lit up, the red light was only to be used for emergencies as it stood for and one thing only: _Danger_. It had come from Xytas. Michael immediately halted and Maria looked over to the Sangheili's position.

From what her VISR software was telling her, his arm was pointed out past Michael's position. She followed his outstretched arm into the low mist. Her eyes went wide as slowly but surely, a large shape began to emerge from the mist.

To say it was big was an understatement. The creature ambled toward them, its two large wings folded up against its matte greenish grey scalelike skin that glistened in the falling rain with spines beginning from the back of its head that stitched all the way down to the end of its long tail. The overall size of the creature was about the size of a M510 Mammoth. To the Sangheili it didn't click, but to both of the Spartans it looked oddly familiar but somehow off, like it was supposed to be much smaller. Michael came in over the comm, breathless as if he just ran a 42-kilometer marathon nonstop.

"Commander is that-" He seemed to choke as he tried to find his words. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Stay still. Don't – make – any – sudden – moves." She calmly whispered over the comms.

The creature took another step closer to their position, the ground shaking as it did. It would eventually be on top of them and they couldn't move fast or the mist that currently hovered over the creek would part around them when they moved. So, it was either move and get the attention of the creature or wait until it crushed them underfoot. Xytas in the mean time had slowly reached back and replaced his XM380 with the XM110 hoping that the sniper had enough power to penetrate and carefully raised it into position for a kill shot. Maria saw this and reasoned with his thinking and readied her own sniper. Remove the problem before it got any worse, considering of what the creature seemed to represent, it was a good tactic. There might have been another way but right now, the creature was between them and the path to the clearing.

Maria told Michael over the team comms to ready up his Spartan Laser just in case. The creature at this time had now taken two more steps closer and they could now see its yellow eyes scanning about the area. On her count on three, she told the team that herself and Xytas would fire with their snipers first, closely followed by Michael with the laser.

1…

Xytas zoomed in his scope and took aim so that he was now looking up close at the creature's yellow vertical slit pupils. Maria did the same, while Michael thumbed off the safety on his laser.

2…

One of the two legs of the creature came down in a splash as it went into the flowing creek as Michael began to charge his laser. The high pitched whine of its charging sequence cut through the rain filled air like a knife. The massive creature stopped and looked around to where the annoying sound was coming from, its eyes eventually settled on a spot in the mist, there it spotted a small red light glowing brighter. The creature's big yellow eyes opened wide in surprised shock and tried to turn away, too little too late.

3!

Two white blue beams of energy lanced out from the mist, piercing through the creature's eye and into its brain. A scant millisecond later, Michaels shoulder kicked back as his Spartan laser discharged its iconic ruby red beam of energy into the creature's head, blowing off the top to the elements. The creature still stood on its legs for a few more seconds before its body realised there was no more signals coming from its brain and crumpled to the ground, its head, what was left of it, landed into the creek with a bloody splash.

* * *

She woke up from her duties, screaming out in anguish as the pain roared through her head like the howling wind outside. One of the night guards standing watch outside rushed in alarmed, asking if anything was all right. She calmed down, now remembering where she was. She then acknowledged and told the guard everything was ok but she had to leave. The guard nodded in understanding and asked if there was anything else she needed. She shook her head as she opened the balcony doors, the storm rain lashed at her face as she stepped outside.

The guard behind her closed the doors keeping the room dry again. She watched as lightning forked through the clouds as she readied her wings for flight. With an almighty beat from her wings, she soared off into the storm. As she turned to her heading that would take her to her destination, she thought about this storm. She hadn't experienced one quite like it. It was different, foreboding, and sinister. Something was coming, something terrible, something that will change everything and deep within she felt there was nothing anyone could do about it.

* * *

Xytas prodded the upper body of the creature with one of his two-toed hoof like feet, making sure it was really dead even though Michael had vaporised the important part of its skull with the laser. Now completely lying dead on the ground, well most of it, it looked even bigger than it was before. The team had de-cloaked and was now documenting it for further study. If there was one, there were most likely others like it. Michael unsheathed his combat knife and cut away a small portion of its scalelike skin from its body. Hopefully the small science team on-board the _**Howling Dark**_ could make sense of all of this, and confirm or deny their suspicions.

_Time to go_. It was all the Maria had said to them. Michael once again took point as he moved alongside the creek, its flowing water now stained red from the blood when what was left of the creature's head landed in it. The team continued to follow the creek without any more complications. The storm of the night still dredged on as they continued following the creek, the lightning occasionally lighting up the creek up well enough that their HUDs polarised slightly on each flash. After many minutes of treading along the creek banks they emerged into a wide clearing. They had arrived at their destination. As the team fanned out, weapons up, Maria activated her long range comm gear in her armour and sent out a handshake signal to the orbiting BLACK WIDOW SATCOM and waited.

On the bridge of the _**Echo of Stars**_, one of the signal technicians bolted upright as his screen flashed from the receiving handshake protocol, he swivelled around in his chair.

"Commander, I think I've got them!" he called out to the XO.

The Sangheili commander walked over and stood behind the crew member's chair.

"Send the counter signal, make sure it is them."

"Yes sir."

The technician sent out the counter signal. '_The three stars that wait_.' A short while later came the reply. '_Of the three greatest kings_.' It was finally them. After much failure of trying to link up with the ground team they had finally done it.

"Handshake confirmed. Patching it through."

The Captain walked over from the one of the bridge windows he had been staring out of and came to a halt next to his XO just as the transmission came through static riddled.

"_Th** is Rap*or six-**n reporti** in. Do *** copy?_"

"Can you clean up that transmission?" The captain asked the technician crew member who was busily tapping on his holoscreen, trying to clean it up.

"_T**s is **ptor si**on*. Any**e ** this freq****y?_"

"I'm to trying sir. The signal keeps jumping in and out and… there, got it!"

This time round the signal flowed through the channel smoothly.

"_I say again. This is Raptor Six-one. Is anyone there?_"

"_**Echo of Stars**_ to Raptor Six-one were here. What's your status?"

* * *

"Were green sir." Maria replied over the long range comms.

"_Have you seen any Covenant Remnant on your travels?_"

"None so far, sir." She debated with her mind on whether she should tell the captain about their run in with the local fauna now or later. She went with the former. "Although to be honest. We came up against… well, something else."

"_Describe what you did come across._"

"It… uh…" It struck her as to how could one describe the creature they had come across, without it sounding like a myth coming back to life? In the few seconds that passed she decided it wasn't going to matter anyway as was best to be out and done with it.

"I believe we came across…" She paused again. Why _was_ she pausing? There's no reason why to pause. Michael and Xytas were now looking over from their positions at her. She knew what was spread across their faces under those helmets. Maria let out the breath she was holding in and keyed the comm again.

"A dragon. Sir."

"_Come again, it sounded like you said dragon?_"

"Yes sir. A dragon."

There was a bout of silence quickly followed by loud laughter that came from multiple voices, probably the entire bridge crew. "_Seriously commander, are you meant to humour us or are you stalling again?_"

"No sir. I am not."

"_So what then are you trying to tell us? That you came across an insignificant lizard that was threatening enough to scare two battle-hardened Spartans and a SpecOps Sangheili? God's boots, pull the other one!_"

"Sir. The thing is, that this lizard wasn't small like the ones we see on Earth. This 'lizard' as you call it, had an overall length of at least thirty meters long from nose to tail and was at the most twenty meters high from the ground up."

There was nothing but the sound of static that came in over the comms for a full two minutes.

"_That's a… pretty big lizard. Where is it now?" _The Captain asked. All the humour that was in his voice previously disappeared and was replaced with a more serious tone, he was concerned that if that thing was still roaming around then it would pose a significant threat to any marines they send down there. No matter how docile it behaved.

"Dead." She replied simply.

"_I take it that its death had something to do with you._"

"Yes sir. It was blocking our path to the clearing we're in now. We killed it in order to get to the area for a proper linkup with the black widow."

"_I see. How did you do it?_"

"Two lance shots from myself and Xytas with the XM110's to its right eye, followed by a blast to the head from Michael with the Spartan laser."

"_Hmm. The small team of eggheads based on the __**Howling Dark **__would scramble over each other for any data you have gathered on it. I highly think they would be very displeased that you decided to kill it though._"

"It was better it than us."

"_Agreed. Send up all the stats and visuals you have gathered so far from this incursion and we'll send it to them. In the mean time lets get you and your team up to speed of what we now know._"

"Is there a problem sir?" Maria questioned.

"_In more ways than one, Commander._"

* * *

On the bridge of the _**Echo of Stars**_, the holotable was alive showing different readouts of the information still coming back from the STAR Satellite. Carmen's holographic representation of herself showed her standing with one hand on her hip and the other near her four-mandible like mouth as she looked over the streaming data deep in thought, a second screen popped up showing the transference of data from Raptor six still on the ground. There was a gentle cough from behind that roused her from her concentration. She turned to see the Captain and his XO waiting patiently so that they could relay what has happened so far together.

Carmen turned back to the holotable, briefly looked at the information sent by Raptor six and quickly sent it to the **_Howling Dark_** science team before she pulled up the scans of the cloud layers as well as the countdown of the release of the Wombat stealth drone.

"Raptor six-one, are you still there?" She asked.

"_Still here._" Maria replied.

"Right, I'm sending down the analysis of what we found in the cloud layer to you."

"_Ok… what are we looking at here?_"

"What you and our team are looking at is the composition of the storm clouds above you."

"_All I see is a bunch of numbers and charts._"

"Its what makes up the storm clouds that are the reason why we're having trouble getting topographical information of the terrain on this planet."

"_And that is?_"

"From the charts you have, the storm clouds have high amounts of rock, ash and high traces of plasma scattered throughout it and these are playing havoc with the scans."

"_Volcanic ash? Where's that coming from?_"

"From analysing the wind patterns from up here, it's originating from the continent with the cloaking spires. Not only that, the volcanic ash is supercharging all the storm clouds it comes into contact with, making them bigger and have now completely covered the continent you're on."

"_How come were able to communicate with you then?"_

"Its thick enough to jam and scatter the scans but not our signals however, you have the black widow to thank for that."

"_You said from before, there were high amounts of plasma detected correct?_"

"Yes and I know were you're going with it. They've found something truly important and they're digging."

"_They only excavate after one thing. And that thing is Forerunner technology. What they've found could pose a danger to everything if it fell into their hands. It would spark another war we don't need."_

"We've already sent a flash transmission to HIGHCOM and FLEETCOM the moment we discovered it, Commander." The Captain replied.

"And I sent one as well to the council, Commander. Humanity, keepers of the Mantel, will not be alone if it comes to that end." Replied Thel 'Surumee as he looked over to the captain and nodded. The captain returned the gesture.

"_That's good to know._" There was brief pause. "_What's the situation about the terrain layout?" _

"Every time we tasked STARS to get the layout, the volcanic ash in the clouds scrambled the scan."

"_What's the solution then?_"

The Captain walked over to the holotable and inputted transference of data to Maria and her team. "We're sending in one of the stealth drones." He said to her.

* * *

The information he gave her team, appeared up on her HUD. Showing all the specifics of what it was and what it would do. As she slowly scrolled through the information, which also included the encryption codes needed to access its live feed, she asked the obvious. "You're deploying one of those? Are you at least one bit concerned any Covenant Remnant that might be around here be able to tell the difference between its engine noise and thunder clap?"

"_It's a chance we're taking. Unless you have a better idea._"

"It'll have to fly pretty low in order to not suck up too much ash and clog its engine intakes."

"_You've seen them in action commander. You know how low they would go to get an answer._"

'_You don't need to remind me twice.' _she thought to herself. "It'll still be a rude wake up call to anything it flies over. I'm just hoping it doesn't fly into one of those lizards or any other large fauna we haven't yet seen on this world."

"_We can only hope commander._ _We've only got just the two._"

* * *

High above the planet, the rear hangar bay door of the _**Deepest Trench**_ began to open wide, revealing only the dark inky blackness within. Slowly and stealthily, a matte black triangle emerged from its cold den. When it fully left, the hangar doors slid shut and the prowler powered back into space, leaving the black object behind. As it entered is pre-programed decent for re-entry, the drone powered up its engines the thrusters beginning to glow in a brilliant electric blue. As it fell in towards its destination, it received its instructions. Locate the team Raptor Six and scan the terrain for mapping, mark any structures seen as important.

The drone booted up its optics package and through it it saw the grey clouds rapidly approaching, with a small adjustment to its ailerons and control surfaces, the drone levelled out in time to skim above the storm. The skies around the drone danced with lightning as it flew overhead. With another slight twitch to its ailerons, the drone disappeared as it dove into the clouds below.

* * *

**A/N:**** If you have any concerns about the chapters don't hesitate to review or give me a PM, it really helps out ****a lot as to where I'm taking this story. Thank you.**


	5. Chapter 4: Waning Crescent

**************Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or My Little Pony. They belong to Bungie/Microsoft/343 Industries and Hasbro respectfully. **

* * *

**Chapter 4: Waning Crescent**

**F-99 Wombat stealth variant, lower atmosphere, 0347, October 8 2581 [Military Calender]**

The drone barrel rolled out of the thick clouds and knifed into the falling rain below, its engine thrusters giving off a brilliant glowing cyan-blue in contrast to the bleak grey sky. According to the mission parameters given to it before the release drop, the recon team's last reported position was north-northwest next to a large river system. Projected flight time: One hour and seventeen minutes. Two objective messages appeared up on its HUD.

_Primary objective: Find the river and link up with Raptor six._

_Secondary Objective: Find any structures correlating to Forerunner structural design to those recorded during the 'Raid on Heian'_

With the information processed and the direction pinpointed. The drone banked hard left in a northeast direction, engaged its engines up to ninety-seven precent burn, just shy from full thrust and afterburner and accelerated through the slanting rain.

*_Beep_*

A small blip appeared on its forward long-range radar. It was far out, twenty-nine point seven kilometres at just max range, but what was strange is that it suddenly appeared, no forewarning whatsoever, it was too far out to properly use the equipment on-board efficiently. The drone's effective total radar range was thirty kilometres out front but fourteen out back and those ranges got cut in half when it flew low. What was even more stranger is, that it was emitting out an energy signature. As the drone continued to fly along its assigned heading, the Dumb AI on-board scanned its database for known energy signatures of covenant, UNSC and Forerunner craft against the unknown.

_No match found corresponding to detected energy signature_.

Without a relevant known signature to compare it to, the AI instead logged the odd contact with U-1 as it transitioned to its rear facing radar, noticing it had closed distance with the drone, it might've wanted to get a proper look at it, but the optics package mounted in the drone could only face forward and not turn no more than one eighty degrees side to side. Due to protocol in any instance, detected or not, the drone did a slight detour banking hard over some hillsides to the southwest. Just in case this unknown had seen it and decided to play 'Follow the leader'.

After five minutes of this detour without any other contacts or the odd energy unknown it had from before, the drone doubled back from where it diverted from and prepared to continue back towards its priority one mission, all the while scanning the terrain below for mapping purposes.

It was relatively quiet for a few minutes of flight when, not one, but two blips cropped up on its radarscope.

*_Beep_*

_Contacts. _

_Targets Distance: Behind, thirteen kilometres out. Projected target's direction: North-northwest._

_Alert! Energy signature detected from one of the targets._

_Crosschecking energy signature to known UNSC, Forerunner and Covenant craft. No corresponding match found._

_Crosschecking to unknown logged energy signatures. One corresponding match found!_

_Target energy designation: U-1. _

Not only it was the same odd unknown contact from before, it also appeared to have another with it. The AI took note of this revelation and this time nosed the stealth drone to almost treetop level, hoping that the cluttered features of the ground would mask its dark angular profile to its now twin pursuers and hopefully lose them at the same time.

* * *

The rain enveloped around her as she took off from the maze, having just talked to Discord earlier about her dream. An odd place to claim home too after what has happened to him but he had said it added a sense of belonging somewhere. She quite doubted that was the whole truth. As she flew through the storm rain, still unable to fly through the clouds as it would make her splutter and cough, she recalled the meeting she had with him.

After done explaining to Discord about what she experienced. He had said while that she had the skill to enter another's mind, whether that mind is half awake or asleep, she also was linked to it slightly and only the most powerful emotions would affect her. In this case, it was the shocked pain she experienced when whatever animal's mind she had entered, saw the red light and tried to flee in its last moments of its being to exist.

"_I mean honestly Princess Luna, I thought you would've been able understand that by now._" He had said.

"_One thousand years of being imprisoned in the moon by my own sister after trying to cover the land with eternal darkness. You tend to forget to know a few things._" She had replied.

"_Humph. Is there anything else you need explained or am I done here?_"

"_We're done, for now._"

He had turned to leave, "_Be warned, this has a strong sense of something you don't want to trifle with._" He had suddenly said in an uncharacteristic way of himself.

The sentence had confused her. Why would he say such a thing? Typically he wouldn't warn anyone about impending form of chaos of any kind and he started to act a bit jittery too. She had to ask why.

Instead of explaining himself, he had suddenly said, "_The Key will turn and we will falter. We are nothing but a lie to the eyes of the upholders_." in a rather cryptic dark monotone way as he disappeared in a shaft of golden light, leaving her once again alone in the maze with the still falling rain.

The last lines of his strange words swirled through her mind as she continued to fly in the direction where she believed were the animal lay, she didn't know exactly how she knew this, she just had that feeling about where to go.

She could feel the thrumming of the thunder rumble through her chest, when she saw two pinpricks of light flying out ahead of her in the distance. The way they moved, it was just so out of place to everything else around it that her own curiosity to the lights overtook her better judgement. As she closed in on them, the picks light revealed themselves to her as twin circles of shimmering cyan-blue light against an angular dark shape. It was a strange thing to be flying up here, as she hadn't seen anything quite like it.

Flashes of lightning forced her to suddenly close her eyes and when she reopened them, the twin strange cyan-blue lights were gone, and in their place was a quickly approaching blue Pegasus with rainbow coloured like hair.

Luna had to pull up hard in order to slow her forward momentum from trying to follow the blue lights. Thankfully there was enough airspace to come to almost complete stop next to the Pegasus.

"Princess Luna! What a-are you doing h-here?" Rainbow Dash said. Quite shocked and a bit surprised at the sudden appearance of the princess of the night.

"I would say the same thing about you, Rainbow Dash. Isn't it quite early for you to be even out at this time?"

"I would agree with you there, but as you can see," she gestured around at the thunderclouds that filled the sky. "I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with these clouds."

"What do you think is wrong?" Luna asked, although it probably had something to do with how she couldn't breathe properly while flying through them.

"I don't know. It's been like this for hours. Myself and the other Pegasus can't seem to control it either, like there's something in them that's stopping us." Dash said as she scratched her head rather mystified.

"It might have something to do about how I was almost unable to properly breathe up there."

"A sort of choking sensation right?"

"Yes."

"I get that too, by the way what are you doing up here Princess?"

As the both of them hovered in place just below the clouds overhead, she debated whether she should tell rainbow her about the meeting with discord and the two blue lights she saw, or tell her she was heading to the Everfree forest to find the animal she saw in the vision. She opted for the latter, slightly modified as to not mention the end the creature had seen.

"I was going to -" she never finished her sentence when Rainbow Dash suddenly interrupted her.

"Hey, what's that?" she said pointing out into the distance.

Luna followed her pointing hoof to the spot she was questioning about, sure enough and once again, two blue pinpricks of light zoomed away low into the distance.

"I don't know what it is."

"Do you think it has something to do with how the clouds are behaving erratically?"

"It could be anything affecting them."

"I still don't like it. I'm going to take a closer look."

"Be careful."

"I'm always careful." Rainbow Dash practically lied and sped off to follow the strange flying lights as Luna watched from afar until she couldn't see her anymore.

* * *

The F-99/S Wombat AI continuously checked its radarscope and noticed that the energy signature from one of the two contacts was gone but the other had now split off and was closing in, _fast_. Too fast to be any known flying creature, so it had to be some sort of unknown guided projectile. A missile.

Even though it wasn't receiving a locked-on tone the drone's manoeuvring options were limited anyway and there was only so much the AI could do at this altitude in so little time before the unknown missile impacted and blew it to bits or worse, disable it and recover the waypoints from its databanks about where its been when it fell out of the low sky to dirt side.

It knew it was targeted, its stealth advantage gone, its original primary mission scrubbed. Confusing and outrunning the supposed missile was the best options it had.

The drone ramped up its engines past full and straight into afterburner. Its engines flared from its cyan-blue colour to glaring furious red as it ejected twin hot exhaust plumes from its rear, vaporising any rain that came into contact with. In one minute flat, it reached the sound barrier and shattered it, its tremendous screeching thunderous roar echoed through the skies.

* * *

It was fast, but not so either. As Dash got in close, the lights grew wider and revealed them to be twin shimmering cyan-blue colours attached against a black angular shape. She wanted to get in closer, so she picked up her speed to match the flying objects speed. It was a stupid move to make, because the shimmering blue lights she was seeing suddenly switched from the awesome blue to a livid fire red and began speeding away from her with some serious airspeed.

_Oh no you don't_. She thought to herself as she picked up the pace even faster.

The air behind the red lights was hot, really hot. Instead of pursuing directly from right behind, she moved just enough to be out of its burning wash when she suddenly felt the air around her compress and became shattered with noise as the object in front broke the sound barrier. She put all the energy she had into pursuing the object as she too broke the barrier along with it.

The sensation of braking the barrier felt nothing like the routine she went through when creating the famous sonic rainboom, this however was exhilarating yet painfully different. The rain she felt when it hit her body, didn't simply collect and roll off, every individual drop stung at her like being pricked by thousands of needles. The wind pressure acting against her face were incredibly strong as well, she could barely keep her head up just in order to see where she was flying.

As the minutes passed, it was beginning to prove all too much for her to continue at this tremendous speed. Her wings and body had begun to protest in agony, her face was starting to go all numb as the blood drained from her face, and her hearing was beginning to fade out by the thunderous roar the black shape in front put out.

Just as she was about to slow down and pull away, giving up the chance figure out what it was for her own well being, the black shape up front suddenly slowed down and the roar it made subsided as its two livid red lights returning to their bluish colour before it dove steeply into a mountain range gorge.

Rainbow Dash had to slow down significantly as well in order to keep herself from overshooting and loosing sight of it. As she dove down after it, above and slightly behind, very thankful that the dark shape didn't decide to speed up again, she began to realise she was horribly lost. She had no clue where she was, as everything she previously saw was a continuous blur to her memory. As she looked down at the object she was pursuing, now close enough to see its blue lights attached to the back of a black object which at this time was lighting up the gorge walls just well enough truly see the complete outline of it.

She breathed raggedly in awe at how large it appeared to be, much bigger than she originally thought it was. It was angular, sleek black with a nose white tip, quite broad fixed wings, and was about the total length of Ponyville's locomotive.

The angular body slipped around a bend giving her another look at it from a different angle. She immediately felt a freezing chill run down her spine.

_What was this thing she had chased?_

Another bend, another look at the strange black shape and another sense of dread that filtered through her mind and down her back. She was beginning to realise she was loosing concentration, as the tolls she took straining her body and wings to pursue the object began to come back hard.

The black object sped around another bend and suddenly out into the glaring open, as the gorge ended into the side of a wide valley that was dominated with wild trees and a large winding river. She finally recognised where she was, it was part of the Everfree forest river system. Up ahead the black shape sharply turned and started to follow the river upstream.

In her mind she realised that if it continued following the river, it'll eventually come out where Ponyville was, which would be bad for all manner of reasons. She imagined what would happen if the angular body broke the barrier over the town, it would be extremely dangerous and probably fatal to anything it passed over if it did.

* * *

When the drone entered the gorge after shattering the sound barrier for seven minutes to loose its quite quick pursuer, its radar started to become distorted and scrambled. The contact that was still on radar began to flicker on and off the scope. Perhaps dipping into this gorge wasn't such a good calculation on its part. Nevertheless after a few twist of turns, the gorge abruptly ended into a wide area of thick dense forest, its centre occupied by a wide river as two messages cropped up on its optics HUD.

_River system reported near Raptor Six located. _

_WARNING, external fuel tanks low, switch to internals._

So it found the river system that Raptor six was believed to be near, but with its external fuel diminishing and even less in its internals, it was going to be cutting it quite close. The AI checked its now unscrambled radar, the contact or so called 'missile' that had doggedly chased it at the ridiculous speeds at low altitude through the storm was still there but had fallen back. Perhaps it wasn't a missile it had first come to a conclusion with, the most illogical conclusion it came up with this time was perhaps it was another creature that populated the planet, almost just like the one Raptor Six encountered, only this thing could pass the sound barrier.

_WARNING Fuel Low! Fuel Low! Switch to internal._

*_Ker-chunk_* *_Ker-chunk_*

The two underslung large cylinder shaped fuel tanks fell away and dropped into the water below, making twin tall fountains of water as the drone switched to its internal fuel. The contact that was still behind seemed to swerve away in surprise on the radar, as to narrowly avoid being hit by the falling tanks. The fast contact still didn't make sense to the AI, as the drone continued to follow the river, at those speeds whatever creature this is, should've ripped off whatever propulsion or wings it was using a long time ago.

The river turned in a wide bend and up ahead was quite a large clearing. The drone zoomed in its optics and picked out three FOF tags along the tree line.

_Primary objective achieved._

It had found them, but it wasn't out of danger yet. The AI quickly rechecked its radar, the contact was nowhere to be detected, presumably too tired to continue or it had crashed down into the forest below, either way the AI was happy, it had finally lost its tail as it flew over the clearing with a thunderous roar.

* * *

Rainbow Dash was extremely exhausted by the time she landed on the outskirts of Ponyville after she broke off from chasing the mysterious black shape sometime ago. It all felt like a dream, first she was talking to Luna about the state of the clouds the next she was chasing an impossibly fast angular shape across the land, it all seemed so surreal. The rain was still falling as she painfully lied down under a thick tree, its intertwined branches staving off the falling rain keeping the ground below relatively dry.

She could feel her whole body begin to relax as it was relived from flying in the way that it did. She promised herself she would go out again to where the shape dropped the two other objects into the water. Hopefully the answer she's looking for resided with them, about where they came from. _Hopefully_. She thought to herself, as she drifted off silently to sleep.

* * *

The narrow valley was still covered in a low blanket mist, despite the still falling rain, as Princess Luna landed gently onto the soaked ground. The place wasn't exactly pretty to begin with, the small creek that occupied its centre seemed to be clogged and the air around it reeked with a strong smell of copper.

She walked over to the blocked up creek and put one of her hooves into the murky water, when she pulled it back out, the water seemed to stick to her hoof slightly. The strange substance clinging to her hoof was too dark to see in the current light. To solve the problem, she did a spell that would illuminate the area a short distance with her horn.

When she did, the princess immediately regretted doing so. For clinging on her hoof was not a sight to see for anypony at that, clinging to her hoof was a covering of dripping… coagulated… red… _blood_. Luna immediately felt sick. The urge to throw up rushed though her body as the colour quickly drained from her face.

_What would do such a terrible thing?_

As she looked around the ground for something to wipe off the blood off her hoof, when she spied where the blood had come from. She could see the dragons partially blown open head lying half submerged in the creek, showing it's whatever remaining insides for the whole world to see.

The urge to throw up became too much to tolerate and she brought up whatever contents she had from her stomach onto the dark ground. The words that Discord said, during the last moments of their meeting as he left, spiralled through her mind.'_…Something you don't want to trifle with…'_

As the last droplets of her bile were wiped away from her mouth, she took a tentative step closer to the lifeless body that was probably once a majestic sight to behold. She gagged at the smell. It was repulsive at best. The air was still thick with the constant taste of copper at the back of her mouth, and not to mention the smell from the recent bile she had brought up didn't help either. She had to see the damage either way, to prepare herself if she ever came across whatever held this power to do this.

Looking over at the head of the body, she could see the semicircular gaping hole that tore through the top of its head and scorched the remaining flesh around it. There were no other marks on the rest of the body, or so she thought. As she walked up to its tail section she could see part of its skin missing, examining it up close she could see it was created by something serrated, a knife probably.

_Was it taken as a trophy for slaying it or was it taken for something else?_

She walked a good distance away from the deceased, her head bowed down in dismay, sorry it had to come to this. With a deep saddened breath she charged her horn, dark swirling purple gathered around its tip. As she closed her eyes, a tear rolled from them and she fired at the body. The swirling purple energy impacted, engulfing it in a purple inferno, in the few seconds the body was no more, nothing but a small pile of ash remained as the storm scattered the ashes to the wind and she turned and took to the skies.

* * *

With its external tanks gone and whatever fuel remained in the internals, the Wombat drone flew over the small hills that dotted the landscape to Raptor Six's northeast at their request. If this Covenant Remnant splinter group had indeed found and were digging for believed forerunner artefacts, then there had to be some form of architectural structures dotted somewhere across the planet. Buildings that could be similar as to what was seen from the photographs taken during the unclassified 'Raid on Heian' that occurred during the Human – Covenant Great War.

The drone skimmed between two low hills and into another wide valley and instead of being populated by nothing but thick foliage of trees, the forward optics picked out a large clear open area with a small steep ravine cutting through it, centred in the middle of all this however were large structural ruins.

_Secondary objective achieved_.

The AI in the drone analysed the structure with its equipment, matches to forerunner architecture came back positive along with other structure similarities to human make and something else not documented yet. An interesting revelation, as the drone circled round and passed over the ruins from the other direction.

_Bingo fuel. Return home._

The drone sent a burst transmission message detailing the directions for the structural ruins to Raptor Six, as it did that the drone pointed its nose towards the sky and engaged its thrusters to full burn to escape the worlds pull of gravity. The drone soared into the sky as it gave one last mighty roar and disappeared into the clouds leaving behind but the silence of the gentle falling rain that filled the air.

* * *

**Griffon Territory, mountainous caverns, date unknown.**

The body, once belonging to the queen of the Griffon kingdom, was tossed aside broken, burned and lifeless after the creature had stabbed her in the chest with its glowing blade. The creature had spoken to the king in the griffon's main language, but more formally, about the king's staff, about where it was kept.

The Griffon king in his own foolishness, refused to give the location away and so he paid the price of watching his wife be shot by another of the three tall creatures in the hall with its blue weapon before her curtailing screams of burning agony were cut short by the leader's long blue sword.

The monster once again turned to the king and spoke.

"As you see, it is unwise to stall any further," As it casually flicked the queens red blood from its hand, its sword was still active as it gave off a hauntingly blue glow to the cavern hall walls.

"You are nothing but a coward. You fight behind the backs of your less than honourable warriors. You're nothing but a puppeteer." The creature had come to a halt and was now standing in front of the king, its immense height and golden armour looming over him. "Give the artefact to me and you will be spared a less than glorious death."

"I will never surrender it away to a bully like you!" The Griffon king retorted.

"So be it."

The Sangheili Supreme Commander took his sword and beheaded the king with one swift move. The head fell to the floor, its eyes began fluttering for thirty seconds before the eye muscles finally relaxed and gave a long off look of complete utter horror.

The supreme commander spat on the now headless corpse and turned to his subordinates, his voice filled with rage.

"Tear apart this place piece by piece if you have to and find me that artefact! The will of the gods demand it!"

With a chorus of "Yes, Supreme Commander!" The other elites left the room except for one.

"Chal, what do you have?" said the Sangheili commander.

The elite in deep green zealot armour, Chal, stepped forward and knelt in front of the commander.

"We have managed to decrypt more passages from the holy inscriptions commander. We've found that six more artefacts are needed to complete the key."

"And have you found where they were located?"

Chal pulled out a portable hologram from his combat harness, settled it on the ground and pressed a small button on the side of it, bringing up the hologram render of the entire world they were on.

As Chal stood up, he pointed to the next largest landmass next to theirs. "The inscriptions detail and indicate that they are scattered across this landmass." He said as the continent lit up with coloured waypoints where the artefacts could be found.

The supreme commander analysed the holographic world and spoke to his second in command.

"Take a few squads in two spirits and a phantom and set up a forward observation post somewhere near one of the artefacts locations. I have a strong feeling that the humans and the false empire now know of our sudden rise to power and may have followed one of our resupply ships back here."

Chal nodded and was about to leave when his commander halted his movement with his hand on his shoulder armour.

"One more thing Chal, when you come against anything that will and would impede our progress, whether that be these scruffy little dogs, the humans and their false allies or anything else, do what is needed to cleanse their heresy from the surface."

"It will be done." Chal said as he turned and left. The supreme commander deactivated his plasma sword as Chal disappeared from his sight.

* * *

**A/N: I was such in a joyous mood, by joyous I mean grinning like a cheshire cat for most of the writing. I decided to get this out there and give you more to read. Word of warning for all other chapters proceeding this one, it will get deeper... very deep. **

**Just so you know, the Prologue: Nothing but Ocean, has a few scattered ****secrets intertwined in it and two of them are big and they will correlate to the chapters ahead.**

**Don't forget to leave a review and try to guess my intentions of the story.**


	6. Chapter 5: Best Guess At Best

******************Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or My Little Pony. They belong to Bungie/Microsoft/343 Industries and Hasbro respectfully.**

**Much longer than the previous chapters, was going to cut in two but decided against it. **

* * *

**Chapter 5: Best Guess At Best**

**Spartan Michael, forest clearing, planet's surface, 0459, October 8 2581 [UNSC/SE Military Calender]**

The rainstorm filled sky had changed from its deep grey to a slightly lighter colour signifying that the beginning of the new dawn as it drew ever nearer and the shadows of the dark began to come to an end. Michael looked to the sky as the fallen rain rolled off his visor in beads and downriver as he heard an unmistakeable _whine_ of an engine noise common to human made aircraft.

With the zoom ability incorporated in all Spartan GEN 2 armour, he began tracking the incoming black shape of the F-99/S Wombat as it soared through the sky towards them. It wasn't exactly all that exciting to look at, to him it looked like a black jagged triangular box with wings, he eventually lost sight of the drone when it roared overhead and behind the tree line that covered two sloped hills it flew in between.

The return of the silence followed soon after the drone passed through as Michael resumed his attention to the tree line that boarded their small clearing over by the near river. He thought back to what was achieved while waiting for the drone to link up, in that time Maria had sent Xytas forward across the river, which wasn't that deep, and into the forest on the other side to assess the upcoming terrain.

He reported back over the comm that the forest began thinning out, if one would continue heading in the direction of the two hillsides that could be seen from the Spartans position, the same two hills that the drone happened to head between.

With the thinning out of the trees, it meant they could turn back on their motion tracker's but it also meant that the reliable cover the trees had provided would be diminished. Michael's recounting of his thoughts was interrupted when he heard the same noise engine again, but this time it was significantly louder. With his augmented eyesight that allowed him to see in the dark, he spotted a bright yellow dot accelerate above the hilltops and into the clouds. The drone was returning back home.

On the squads HUD's, a priority one message came through from the retreating drone.

_Structural formation ruins detected. Scans indicate part unidentified, part Forerunner and part human mix in architectural design. Uploading structure's location waypoint to ground team HUD's._

A small blue diamond appeared on their internal compass. Interestingly, the waypoint pointed in the direction of the two hills where Xytas had scouted forward earlier and to where the drone had flew off too.

"You two get that?" Maria questioned over the comm.

Two green confirm lights from the both of them lit up on her HUD as she zoomed in her visor distance across the river and saw the green outline of Xytas crouched over and looking at something on the ground before he stood up and walked closer the the river.

"Good, we move out in two. Set your motion trackers to seventy-five out. Any anomalies that show up bigger than a pinhead report it in to me immediately, that encounter with the local fauna is a distraction I don't want to have repeated again."

"Yes commander." Both Xytas and Michael replied almost in sync.

"Once we get across, I'll take point and the Lieutenant has rear guard." Maria said as the two Spartans walked over to the riverbank and into the water and began to wade through it. As the cold water in the wide river came up to their waist halfway over, Michael remarked that this was peacefully quiet than the last time he did such a long crossing.

"Let me guess, during the river course from Spartan basic?" Maria said.

"Close, but it was when crossing a fjord in the dark on some planet during the war and the bridge that crossed over it was out halfway, courtesy of the continual Covenant wraith bombardment that rained hell on us as we swam across. On a side note, at least the water was warm." Michael told his little story over the comm as he held his XM380 high above the waterline just to be sure if accidentally dropping it in the water would cause it to somehow malfunction in some way or another.

"I'll bet it was." She said as the two Spartans waded out of the wide river and up onto the opposite bank. Xytas was waiting patiently next to a warped tree trunk, his dark red armour blending in well to the backdrop of the forest.

Maria pushed through into the think clumping of trees that populated the bank with Xytas coming in behind, Michael turned around to look behind him and down the river he saw a large wet hump emerge out of the water along with similar humps following it, like a snake swimming vertically through water. _It's deeper in other places then, good to know._ He quickly turned back around and headed into the brush as he relayed what he had seen to the commander over the comm.

The density of the surrounding forest became reduced significantly the closer they got to the marked blue waypoint. It was like someone came along with an army armed with nothing but chainsaws and cut away anything that didn't resemble a relatively straight tree. Michael voiced his concerns about the seemingly _natural_ positions of said trees that dotted the landscape ahead of them over the radio.

"Does anyone else have a bad feeling about this?"

"A bad feeling about what? Spartan." Xytas's voice crackled over the comm.

"Its the trees. They just seem to far spread apart to be a natural occurrence."

"Eyes open, watch your motion tracker and you'll be fine." She said as she cut in into the conversation.

"Copy that."

The land with its spread out trees continued like this for most of the way to the waypoint until they reached the base of the two hills they saw from their small clearing down by the river. A small clump of trees surrounded the passage in between the two hills that was just barely wide enough to fit a scorpion tank through.

Their luck however wasn't down on their side tonight, for right there sleeping at the passage's entrance was another large creature. The comm came alive with whispered expletives at the mere sight of it.

"By the rings, what is-"

"What the bloody hell is that?"

Maria ordered the squad to immediately activate their active camo and go take cover behind the trees. Due to the sparseness of the overhead tree cover, she was able to quickly link up to the _**Echo of Stars**_ with a live feed from her helmet camera, this came at a cost however, as while the live feed was a given a radio uplink with the ship was impossible, but team comm's weren't.

* * *

The Sahara-class prowler glided silently through the blackness of space just along the inner fringe of the asteroid belt, silently watching the planet from afar as it became engulfed with enormous storms. On the bridge everything was still relatively quiet, the captain was in the main ready room and was busy in a holo meeting with the task group discussing about the recent data recovered from the drone and the information passed on by Commander Williams about the large animal encounter, as such it was left to second in command Thel 'Surumee to fill in the position over for the next few hours.

One of the communications officers manning one of the consoles sat upright in her chair and quietly called over the XO.

"Sir, I've got a message from Commander Williams of Raptor team." She said.

"What kind?" Thel 'Surumee asked.

"It's a direct live feed from her helmet cam. Pulling it up on screen."

The officer's second console screen flickered into a myriad of static lines as it connected to the uplink, eventually after seven or so seconds later it began to clear up. The visual that came through was filtered through a ghostly green colour indicating that it was still quite dark enough that the camera still needed to use night vision at this time. Centred in the middle f the frame was a large mound that seemed to rise and fall slowly. Another creature this team had uncovered.

Thel leaned in and looked to the top middle of the screen. He noticed that a waypoint was marked on the commander's compass. It was the waypoint that the drone marked out for the ground team and the most direct route to it was blocked by the sleeping creature of what looked to possess lots of ragged fur and a set of wings. He had seen the after action report sent by the _**Deepest Trench**_ as soon as they retrieved the drone. What intrigued him about the report was the strange radar signatures it had picked up, airborne targets to be more accurate.

"Transfer the feed to my personal holopad."

"On it," The officer's hands tapped swiftly over the keyboard interface. "Done."

Thel unlatched his holopad from his combat harness and slowly walked back towards the central holotable. From the angle the Spartans camera was positioned, it showed that the creature had a flattish face, with what looked like two closed eyes, a triangular short stubby nose, it had a wide mouth that was closed but had four large pointy teeth protruding from the top and bottom part of its mouth and its head was encompassed with a short dark mane. Along its back he noted, it had a pair of short wings,_ perhaps this was the contact the drone picked up and followed by._

He looked again more closely at the wings which proved his theory wrong, they were way too small to achieve the speeds the drone was going at. His eyes continued to drift along its body to the partially obscured back end of the creature where it ended with a long barbed tail. All these features, apart from the wings, pointed to one thing.

_Predatory carnivore. Attack to kill with one strike. _

As Thel continued to analyse the creature, absorbing its key details for future reference, he casually walked over to Carmen's inactive holopedestal and asked the AI. "Do you have anything you can tell me about this?"

His holopad screen seemed to shiver as she interfaced with it while the inactive holopedestal sprung to life as the AI's glowing grey form appeared upon it, her hands on her hips.

"I was in the middle of analysing the information gathered from the drone with the task group. Can this wait?"

"I do believe this is something that they should all know."

With a noise that sounded more like a long sigh, the AI's raised her hands and clapped twice. The holotable nearby lit up and projected from the centre were the standing forms of the current present collective leaders of the task group, roughly projected in a semicircle. In the centre of the ark stood Markus Schreiber, overall leader of the task group and captain of the _**Echo of Stars**_, his face still etched with concern over the two '_otherworldly_' reports that had occurred recently.

To Schreiber's projected form on the left was that of Commander Samuel Allencourt of the _**Howling Dark**_, the youngest of the collective group. He had his arms crossed over his chest, clearly unhappy of the sudden intrusion to their meeting.

To Allencourt's left as well, stood Captain Katelyn Cosgrove of the _**Deepest Trench**_, an excellent tactician even under the most extreme circumstances had her hands clasped proudly behind her back.

To Schreiber's right however was Major Aloysius Hwan, veteran in and commander of the Human-Covenant war experienced twenty-six helljumper ODSTs stationed on the Echo. The projected form of him showed he had a scowl that crossed his United Korean descendant features. Thel already knew Hwan still had a deep resentment against all Sangheili in general including anything else that didn't look remotely human either and that went double to everyone in the Spartan corps, all except one.

Directly opposite of the prowler leaders and wearing a thick lab coat was the head of the small science team, doctor Eric Wilson. Thel had only heard his name mentioned from the captain just before he had left the bridge for the meeting and left Thel in charge. The look on the team leader's face wasn't that of concern however, it was the exact opposite.

"Commander Thel 'Surumee. To what do we owe the pleasure for?" Hwan stated off the Sangheili's introduction in a sarcastic tone that was not lost on those present.

"I'm sure your attendance is important somehow commander, on how you've interrupted our little meeting so quickly." Schreiber began, ignoring the sudden misconduct of the major.

"Very captain," Thel held up his holopad in the direction of the AI and turned it slightly. "Carmen can you pull up what is on my holopad please."

"It is done."

Where ever the leaders where, either in their ready rooms or a lab, one of their screens changed from a blank screen to the feed Thel was seeing on the holopad. Almost at once the stand fast faces of the group turned to that of bewilderment.

"Oh wow,"

"What the?"

"What is, wait what?"

"Commander, just what are we looking at here?" Captain Schreiber asked for the equally confused whole.

"This is a direct live feed from Spartan commander Williams helmet cam," He gestured to his holopad, which still showed the feed from the Spartans camera and then to the surrounding leaders on the holotable. "Before you, as you can see is another unknown creature her team has come across"

As soon as Thel mentioned it was a live stream Eric had begun to record it immediately, his eyes absorbed every unique detail, he just never expected this type of ordeal to happen to him in his lifetime let alone all the way out here. As he continued to analyse the creature more closely for future study when he played the recording back something in his memory clicked, he had seen this creature somewhere before.

"Hang on a minute," the scientist interrupted. "I've seen this creature, one moment." Before anyone could ask what he was on about, his holographic representation of himself had vanished from the holotable.

He quickly came back on the holo, his face had changed from an inquisitive look to one flustered and filled with excitement as he held up a datapad in his hand. "Yes, yes. It was part of the coat of arms of the university I graduated from on Earth," He held his datapad to his camera emitter. "Carmen could you show this to everyone, if you can."

The screens that was showing the live feed, split vertically in two, the top half showing the live video feed while the lower half showed the symbol of the coat of arms of a university that was on Earth. The bottom of the symbol featured the displayed motto. _Sidere Mens Eadem Mutato_.

Cosgrove had recognised it immediately, she attended this place in her youth before she took on the career path in the UNSC navy.

"That's the coat of arms for the university of Sydney, Australia. I studied astrophysics there before I decided to join up with the UNSC."

"I don't see why this has any relevance to do with what we're looking at Doc."

"May I bring your attention to the shield's top, there as you can see is an animal which seems very familiar."

"Most definitely familiar, but doc, I don't see any wings on this but there's a pair on the other one,"

"I can be of assistance too you know," Carmen began, as she talked her way into the conversation.

"Enlighten me."

"While filtering through data matching to that of the much bigger creature, I came across some files that were transcribed from pages from books to digital that dated back to the late sixteenth century, I don't really know if that was correct or not."

"And in those now digitalised pages described these as what?"

"I'm still having trouble getting accurate references with the so called 'Dragon' but not this particular one."

"Tell us what do you have so far."

Carmen pulled a book seemingly from thin air with her avatar, opened it up and began to read from it.

"In one of the chapters it described this creature had the head of a lion, rows of sharp teeth like a shark," As the AI listed off the features, everyone could begin to see almost identical identification to that on the live stream. "May or may not possessed wings and a tail of either a scorpion or dragon,"

"Did this chapter describe anything else about it?"

"Able to devour its prey whole all the while leaving nothing behind. It also described that it could shoot poisonous spines from its tail to either paralyse or kill its victims outright."

A murmur spread from the collective mouths of the group.

"Is there a specific name that went with this supposed creature?" Allencourt said, still not believing the similarities his mind had already drawn to, trying to ignore the fact of what the video feed was telling him.

"It was a Persian legendary creature known as a manticore."

"Out of pure curiosity, what was it filed under?"

"Sub or main category?"

"The main one."

"Heraldic creatures." Carmen simply answered.

As this little side conversation was going on, the communications officer that Thel had spoken to earlier came up behind him.

"Commander," she began by saying as she saluted.

Thel turned around to acknowledge the officer. "What is it?"

"There's was an incoming message from Raptor team, so I forwarded it to your holopad." She said and then returned to her post.

Thel turned his attention to his holopad; it still showed the live video feed and just above the motion tracker a small typed out blocky message had appeared there.

_If you see what we see, we need orders._

"…raldic creatures... Isn't that where one animal trait is mixed with another?" Thel had heard Allencourt say as he continued his talk with Carmen.

"Mostly, although it's more complicated than just that."

"So we now know what it is, but the big question still remains. WHY of all things, is it existing here?" Allencourt said while he pointed to his screen that showed him the feed.

"I honestly don't know and I've been busily rewriting my logic parameters since."

"Do we even know it can do all the things these texts say it does?" Cosgrove stated. "Because the only way I'm seeing that happening is to wake it, which could probably turn out to be a bad thing as the information we have may be absolutely true."

"I fail to see your point Cosgrove." Allencourt said as he uncrossed his arms and scratched his chin. "What's this thing going to do against two Spartans and one Sangheili, who I might add, are fully armed and armoured enough to take on a fully loaded covie battlecruiser."

She looked to the video feed she had been intently watching, the angle was slightly different and it now included two white outlines in the tree line to the left with friend or foe tags labelled in blue but it still showed the creature still centred on the screen. "What would happen when a squad of marines came across one?"

"They will defeat it to hell and back like every marine would." The major stated coolly and calmly as an unidentified voice of _oorah_ filtered in somewhere behind him.

"I know you well enough that you and your helljumpers would succeed major, but what I'm saying is what if."

While this was happening Thel had asked Carmen to filter in just captain Schreiber and the Doc and began discussing about the message that was sent.

"So Doc, what do you think?"

"It's such an unique find, but as you can see… the choices are literally quite limited."

He was of course right, to a certain point. The manticore's body was partially blocking the small pass and the tall sounding rock walls had no distinguishing handholds to climb up and over, for a marine without climbing gear would be difficult but factor in a half tonne Spartan without climbing gear, according to Carmen's results, it would've taken too long to climb up and over and finding another pass to get though would take too long as well.

"So it's decided then, Doc?"

"I do believe this is the best option, Captain."

The four of them came to the conclusion that the only way through is for Raptor team would stay cloaked and to try sneak around it, hopefully the creature's hearing wasn't like that of a bat's.

"Carmen, if you would." Schreiber said, asking the AI to bring back sound from the other leaders.

"Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention."

* * *

It had been almost ten minutes since Maria had sent the live feed from her camera and another four for the message you had to be patient in any situation knowing that whoever was in charge was hopefully watching and figuring out what the next move would be. Maria shifted her attention back to the large creature, still hadn't moved. It looked like it was dead but looks were deceiving as its chest rose slowly up and down signifying it was very much alive. The soft chime that sounded in her helmet roused her from looking at the creature and made her focus to a line of text that had appeared below her sent message.

_We see it. Stay cloaked. Find a way around it. If it wakes, the safety of you and your team is top priority. _

Silent and non-lethal it was then, unless the situation changed. Fair deal.

She asked the lieutenant, who was with Xytas as well, if there was a way around this creature from their side.

"No such luck commander. This thing's back half is positioned in such a way, the only way over is to jump it."

"Cross over and check the other side."

"Copy that."

The open space between him and the opposite side would've been an easy quick sprint across but he knew such an action would create some form of noise and he had no idea if this thing was a light sleeper or not. In three purposely-slow strides he was halfway across when a gust of wind suddenly swept through, kicking up the leaf litter that covered the forest floor towards him.

Nonetheless he still moved slowly across the open fully knowing that the leaves where dancing around him, four more strides by his estimate was left to go when there was an extremely loud *_crack*_ that sounded a lot like someone firing off a round from a SRS99 sniper rifle indoors.

The large dead branch fell out from the trees that were high on the cliff face that overshadowed the pass and against all odds the branches trajectory impacted straight onto the creatures tail.

The creature jumped up and bellowed out a primal roar from being so rudely woken up from its peaceful slumber. Michael had frozen still not daring to move an inch from his position in the open, as the beasts wild red eyes sporadically roamed around looking for the one responsible for waking it.

The wind was still blowing around when his armour suddenly became distorted, a collection of leaves and sticks had blown up onto his camouflaged armour and some of the leaves that were still mildly wet from the rain, stuck fast to it.

The creature's wild eye's suddenly fixed solely in on the floating leaves in front of it. The beast let out a long roar as its body tensed to pounce on the now partially revealed invisible intruder.

Michael looked down at his armour then back up to the beast and breathed out. "... Well fuck."

"MOVE!" Maria yelled over the comm's to him as she unlimbered and brought up her assault rife into a firing stance

The lion lookalike hybrid leaped from its tense stance directly towards the invisible exposed Spartan, its claws fully extended ready to deliver a powerful swipe at the offending distortion. Time seemed to slow down for Michael as his body began to circulate adrenalin along with a variety of other chemicals throughout his augmented body. This flow of chemicals in turn heightened his twitch response time to just mere milliseconds.

The closest approximation to the feeling was the natural human response if in dire circumstances was the 'fight or flight' response only this was on a whole other level.

Michael dived out of the way while at the same time he had pulled out his combat knife and stabbed it directly into the beast's right shoulder.

The beast fell to the ground with a whump as it stumbled over crying out in anguish, as the blade plunged deep into its shoulder cutting anything in its way. The lookalike spun around to face the Spartan that attacked it, unaware that the super soldier was still gripping the knife as it was suddenly ripped free from its shoulder bringing pieces of flesh and blood along with it as well as leaving a gaping gash along its shoulder.

The blood dripped off the tip of Michaels combat knife and onto the ground, staining it a reddish blue colour. He flicked off the blood and sheathed it at the same time he de-cloaked, transferring the power used for it to strengthen his energy shields, this allowed the beast to finally see what it truly faced.

The animal backed up slightly in uncertainty as it saw the Spartan materialise out of thin air. That uncertainty quickly turned to outrage as it thrust forward its barbed scorpion tail at the super soldier roaring as it did.

Michael rolled to his right in time as the tail passed through the air where he was standing just moments ago.

The creature whipped its tail around to strike at the Spartan's new position, it never got the chance as its left flank was punctured by multiple blue bolts that had come out of the surrounding trees, the jolts it received made the tail miss the newly moved Spartan. Out of the trees emerged another Spartan, completely de-cloaked with its rifle raised and firing controlled bursts into the beasts now bleeding exposed flank.

Michael used this distraction to his advantage and unholstered his sidearm and emptied the entire clip from his pistol until it went click into the open gash he had created when he stabbed the beast earlier.

The lion hybrid became more desperate in its attempts to dispatch its attackers as it continued to cling to life in the face of the overwhelming punishment it was taking from Maria's assault rifle and the excruciating pain it was experiencing in its right shoulder.

Its overall mobility crippled and its shoulder bleeding profusely, the beast made one last attempt to skewer one of the Spartans with its tail, hoping to take something with it to its grave only for it to be cut off mid strike by a floating ghostly blood red blade to which it then entered the creatures face and was twisted, forcefully rearranging the creature's facial features into a burnt unrecognisable scrambled mess.

The fight in total lasted just over three minutes.

The beast was still frozen mid strike when Xytas withdrew his plasma blade allowing the animal's mangled head to finally hit the ground with a *_whump_* along with its connected very dead body following suite. The sangheili deactivated his plasma sword and de-cloaked.

"Tough son-of-a-bitch," Michael said as walked up and kicked the dead animal's knife wounded leg, making it spill more of its blood onto the already reddish blue saturated ground.

"Not really," Maria said as she too walked up to the mess that was and examined Michael's handiwork he had created with the knife. "If you had been more proficient with your aiming skills with your blade, this little prolonged skirmish could've been over already."

"Kinda hard to judge the placement when you have a kitty cat lookalike hybrid the size of a hunter leaping full on towards your faceplate."

Maria shook her head and just smiled under her helmet as she disconnected the live feed to the _**Echo of Stars**_ and switched it over to a radio uplink.

* * *

On the bridge of the prowler everyone who witnessed the skirmish, whether that be the respective Captain that had returned to the ship's bridge reliving the XO from watch along with the major and watched it there or the numbered something of ODSTs that watched the live feed in the break room were absolutely quiet, well almost everyone.

"Still having second thoughts about that statement you made earlier?" Schreiber asked the major as he observed the static filled forward screen that once showed the skirmish.

"Show-off's," Hwan muttered.

"I didn't catch that."

"I don't take it back and I'll never will, we will always be up against something bigger than ourselves but we would always pull though, no matter the cost." He turned and began to walk for the bridge doors.

Schreiber quickly turned to face the major.

"There is now a limit to it now Aloy, we're only three tiny ships against an unknown force of covenant with a planet pockmarked by mythical creatures and I've only just received word that a task group that was sent in reply has the arrival estimate of around three days, the odds are against us again."

The bridge doors slid apart as the major approached them.

"I know all that Mark," he said with a sigh. "But you and I have beaten the odds once before, remember that."

He passed through and the doors slid shut behind him.

"I always do." He said silently as he closed his eye's, remembering back to that god awful day, the silent screaming faces of marines and the blazing fire of boiling plasma.

The crackling of a radio transmission roused him from the memory.

"_Raptor six to echo, do copy?"_

"Echo copies, send it."

"_I'm pretty sure you all saw that, and were about to head to the waypoint now, is there anything we need to know before proceeding?"_

The communication's officer turned in her seat to face the captain.

"There is something you should commander," Schreiber began.

"_Yes, captain?_"

"The creature you fought has a name."

"_A name, one you have come up with, sir_?"

"This name did not come from me or from anybody else on board. No, this name came, from what we have been informed so far is a sixteen eighty eight reference to something that looks like a head of a lion, the tail of a scorpion along with bat like wings. It was named a manticore."

"A _manticore huh, isn't that a heraldic creature?_"

The captain perched up his eyebrows at the statement. "I'm surprised you somehow know that commander."

"_I was taught about heraldic creatures by my father_."

"In that case, that was the creature you faced, consider yourselves lucky,"

"_Why is that sir?_"

"When they kill, they don't leave anything behind."

"_It'll have a hard trouble trying to swallow one of us in this armour._"

The captain had thought about and the creature would probably have a hard time trying to dismember the Spartans with just its claws and mouth. "Continue to head to the waypoint, when you get there contact us immediately."

"_Affirmative, Raptor out._"

The captain looked out to the forward view screen, seeing the storm clouds on the planet begin to breakup as it continued to head inland.

* * *

Maria closed the uplink and headed over to her team that was standing nearby the dead manticore's body to which is was dragged over towards the tree line and covered in leaf litter an attempt to hide the body, the reddish blue blood soaked ground where the skirmish took place was nothing that could be done and hoped the rain would wash most of it away.

"So… we're good then, commander?" Michael asked the commander rather cheerfully.

Maria holstered her assault rifle onto her back. "Yeah, were good. Sunrise will be upon us soon and moving slow like we've been doing lately isn't going to cut it, so we best double-time it with the remaining darkness we have left."

Michael looked over to the manticore's dead body behind him.

"So what do you think, could be better?"

"Unless that see-seven you're carrying would do better."

"That stuff is meant to blow a hole in a wall, not vaporise a buffalo sized body," He knelt, unlimbered his pack and took out a silver canister the size of a frag grenade and looked at it. "And I've only got seven."

"How much?"

He tossed one of the C-7 foaming explosive cans over to the commander who caught it and looked to the mangled mess under the leaves, as he calculated the rough amount needed. "Three... maybe four cans and a bit."

Maria briefly looked over at the dead mass then tossed the silver canister back to him. "No, I think its fine the way it is." she said as Michael put the caught canister back into his pack. She looked over to the pass that would take them to their objective.

"Going to be close quarters if we come across anything hostile until we get through, so ready secondaries."

There was a *_slap* *click* _as Michael put a fresh mag into his M6C and thumbed off the safety, another _click_ sounded as Maria switched off hers. There was a slight _hum _as Xytas activated his plasma pistol_._

"Lets get moving." As she quickly jogged into the mouth of the pass followed by the rest of the team.

The dark pass ended on a sloped cliff face platform after six minutes or so jogging through. Beyond the pass revealed a wide area of grass with a scattering of trees and out in the relative distance was their objective. The large structure the drone had marked, decaying and in ruins from not being looked after properly for centuries.

Only there was a problem, there was no reasonable way down apart from the drop in front of them.

"Anyone got any ideas?" Michael said as he looked over the edge steep cliff face.

"Just one..." Maria suddenly jumped over the side without hesitation and slid down the sloped cliff face.

"That's the idea? You have got to be freaking kidding me!" He had said as he and Xytas looked over the lip of the cliff and watched the commander slide all the way down the side and skidded to a stop at the bottom.

"You two coming or what?" The commander's voice suddenly crackled over the comm.

Michael took a deep breath as he looked out at the structure in the distance then let it out as he looked back down to the edge of the cliff.

"... Fuck it."

He vaulted over the side and landed on his side as he slid down to the bottom with Xytas following in slightly behind. The ground came up fast as he braced his body for the upcoming impact. His legs hit the ground with a _whump _and he rolled, converting it into forward momentum so that his bones didn't break from the impact. He came to a stop and looked to the side just as Xytas completed his forward roll right in front of the commander.

"Not far now, just over this crest and we're there." She said as she offered her hand to Michael who was still lying on his side. With a grunted heave she pulled him to his feet and then set off towards the structure that just peaked over the small hill beckoning them to come closer.

It was after ten or more minutes of walking across the long grassy field she eventually arrived at the top. The other Spartan and Sangheili arrived soon after.

"You're not going to like it but we have another situation,"

"Its not another cliff is it?" as Michael came beside the commander.

She looked at him, "Not exactly." And once again began walking towards the structure.

He looked up ahead and saw a large deep gash that threaded between them and the structure. As he and the team came closer it was revealed to be a deep crevice that was too wide to simply just leap across without some sort of help. Michael kicked a large rock that was nearby over the edge the noise it made when it hit the bottom was drowned out as Xytas came in over the comm.

"There's something over here that you should see Spartans."

There was something in his voice that made the two of them think something wasn't quite right. They followed the edge of the crevice over to the sangheili's position, and noticed he was standing beside a flimsy wooden rope bridge that stretched from their side to the other.

"I didn't see any signs of a civilisation when we came down." Michael said as he walked over to the bridge.

"There was nothing _to_ _see_ except for the river and a whole lot of rain." Maria replied as she watched him stand at the beginning of the bridge.

"Well we definitely know the covies didn't do this, otherwise we would've run into them sooner." He said as he prepared to test his foot on one of the wooden planks. Maria looked over to him and asked the obvious.

"Do you honestly think it's going to be able hold up your weight?"

As soon as Michael put the slightest pressure of his weighty MJOLNIR on it, the wooden plank beneath his foot splintered in half immediately.

"Nope." He said as he watched the wooden plank fall down into the inky blackness below.

Maria turned to Xytas and asked if there was anything that he could see that could be used to get across.

"Sorry commander, I don't see anything that would be of help."

She looked back over to Michael who was no longer by the bridge but was now rummaging through his pack and saw him bring out one of three flat metal objects as he settled them down on the ground next to him.

"What are those?"

"These three," He picked up one of the flat metal shapes and calmly flicked it, the object in his hand suddenly sprang out into an upside down 'Y'. "Are emm-eight-zero-five-ex thruster packs." He said as he handed the now unfolded pack over to the commander.

Maria took the M805X pack and looked at it. In theory it could work but she wondered, as she attached it to her back. _Would it be enough?_

"You think this will get us across?" She asked him as the icon for the thruster pack came up on her display.

"I hope so," He said as he handed one out to Xytas who attached it to his combat armour. "Otherwise I packed these in for almost nothing." He finished saying as he stood up holding his armoured backpack in one hand and attached the last pack to his back with the other.

With an almighty heave he tossed his backpack, the spartan laser still attached, over the crevice where it landed in the brush that occupied the other side and walked back a few paces away from the ledge to begin a running start.

"Here goes nothing!" He said as he sprinted full tilt towards the crevice's edge and jumped, when he reached the zenith of his jump he activated the thruster pack that then propelled him the rest of the way over. His boots hit the ground soon after, he had made it. Just.

Maria went next, faring much better than Michael had. She made it with half a meter to spare.

Xytas however misjudged the time needed to activate the pack and fell short, he flung his arm out to grab onto the lip of the crevice to stop himself from falling to an inglorious death, instead an armoured hand grabbed onto his first. The sangheili looked up to the armoured recon helmeted head of Michael as he was slowly hoisted up over the edge.

"Consider the debt repaid." Michael said as he hauled the sangheili to his feet.

"My debt to your species has yet to be repaid but this, I agree, is a start."

Michael nodded in understanding and headed into the bushes where he threw his pack over the gap. After collecting the pack he re-emerged into the open and into a shaft of breaking dawn sunlight that has managed to finally pierce through the cloud cover. His visor automatically dimmed as it adjusted to the light, tinting it an even deeper orange colour than it was before.

Michael looked over to the commander who was standing in the open also and apparently looking up to the sky. He knew what she was doing and switched his over his radio channel to that connected them to the _**Echo of Stars**_ and listened in.

"Sir, we've arrived at the site."

"_Good, still no sign of the covenant?_"

"No, nothing."

"_Keep an eye out, I don't need your team getting ambushed when you go in and check the place out._"

"Anything specific we should be looking for?"

"_Record and tag, then once you think you have covered everything, head back in the direction you came from to an area we believe contains a dark zone generator."_

"We'll get it done, Raptor out."

The comm went silent as the commander signed off and looked over in his general direction.

"Once we're inside, we snap and tag, then we're out and back up the hill to a dark zone where our skills as being ghosts becomes reality, get to it."

At the mention of the cliff they had slid down, Michael thanked whatever guardians were watching over him that he had become a spartan; climbing back up would've been bloody murder if he were still in the corps.

From the relative edge of the crevice to the structure that was their objective the area surrounding it was very open, good idea for attacking from the inside, not so good if you wanted to leave either, a win lose situation. It wouldn't be easy for a spartan if the situation happened but the odds have been beaten before.

The team came to what they assumed was the front entrance, the outside light was growing brighter by the minute but looking inside, it was still fairly dark.

"Helmet lights on people, the eggheads upstairs need our light to figure out what from which when they examine our holiday snaps." Maria said, which earned her twin chuckles over the comm.

Three bright white shafts of light emanated from the side of their helmets, illuminating the dark insides of the hallway beyond as they entered. The hallway they had trekked down ended out into a poorly lit large cavernous central hall, to their right it ended abruptly into one big pile of fallen stone pillars and rubble from either part of the roof or a second floor.

To their left however and up a small flight of stairs rested two solid stone thrones, way to big for an average human. The tall hall also had other hallways branching off into the gloom beyond.

"Lieutenant, check out those hallways behind those stone chairs and see if you can find a way up to the next floor."

"On it." Michael said as he walked over to one of the entrances at the back of the two enormous stone thrones and disappeared into the dark, only the flashlight of his helmet betrayed where he was.

"Xytas, go check out the rubble back there, see if you can determine how it collapsed." The sangheili nodded and turned right, towards the large pile of debris.

Maria came to a stop halfway and stood in the centre of the hallway examining the ceiling structure above her. The layout of the arcing support columns reminded her of being inside of a catholic church she attended once. After five minutes she called Michael up on the comm.

"Have you found as stairs that lead to a second floor?"

"Nothing yet. Just more poorly lit hallways and doorways with no doors... Man, whoever built this place really had some weird tastes." His voice laced with boredom.

"Ok I think that's enough exploring, turn round and head back to the main hall where we are."

"Roger th- fuck!"

Over the comm it sounded like something had crumbled and fell apart all the while Michael had screamed expletives at something. The entire main hallway where Maria and Xytas were standing trembled for the briefest of seconds.

"Lieutenant, what just happened!?"

Nothing but static washed in over the radio.

"Michael, are you there?" Her voice tinged with the slightest bit of worry.

The sounds of coughing came in over the radio. "I'm alright commander, the floor gave way underneath me and I landed in some underground room."

"Stay put, upload the way you took to my display so we can find the hole you fell down and then figure out the rest later."

"Yeah, will do."

He wiped off the layer of rock dust that had fell on his visor and examined the room he fell down into, it was narrow at best, lots of rectangle like blocks lined up and down the walls as far as his helmet flashlight could reach. Michael walked up to the many thin blocks that made up one side of the wall and discovered something peculiar about them as his flashlight illuminated it; all the thin blocks were all different colours.

Something within his mind triggered but he couldn't be for sure.

With a deep breath he tentatively reached out and grabbed firm of one of the blocks and pulled, it slid out silently and into his hands. It surprisingly had weight to it, as he looked it over more than once he had noticed under his helmet light it had no distinguishable markings on the front or back. With a steady hand, he grasped the cover and flipped it open; rows upon rows of unreadable markings covered the page he had turned to.

"Hello down there!" Maria's voice came in over the comm as a shaft of white light came down through the hole Michael fell through.

He looked up and saw two green friendly outlines of a spartan and sangheili, their heads looking out over the edge. He flashed his helmet light off and on to signal he was still down here.

"That's quite a hole you made." She said examining the opening.

"I'm glad you like it." He said back.

"Well it looks like the hallways here, as far as we had explored, don't have any sort of means of getting down to where you are,"

"So what's the plan?"

"We're jumping down to you, best you stand back."

Michael did and illuminated the ground beneath for them both to see where to land.

The sangheili had come down first, dropping into a kneeling position as he landed at the bottom. Maria's descent wasn't that much different but she rolled when she hit the bottom.

"So, what we got down here." As she watched Xytas walk off down the long room, his flashlight waving back and forth as he walked through the dark.

"I looked around and I found that the walls are filled with books."

"Books, as in plural?" She said as she turned her head to look at him.

"Yeah. Here, take a look at this."

"So a library then." She said as she slowly eased open the book Michael had offered her. "A library of what?" as she looked at the symbols that littered the page she had opened to.

"I don't know. The translation software I have can't make heads or tails of it, there is just maybe one or two symbols it recognises as Forerunner but the rest of it… nothing."

Maria closed and handed the book back and watch Michael put it back in the shelf where he found it.

"Spartans, there's something over here that doesn't seem right." The sangheili said over the comm slightly unhinged at his apparent discovery down the end of the library.

The sangheili was standing in front of an angled thick metallic silver column that looked every bit Forerunner in design. As the two Spartans approached the column, as if sensing the presence of the Spartans, the middle of it split apart and revealed a large holographic panel that looked like to those found on the halo rings for the hardlight bridge controls.

Something deep within told Maria that this was something important, something that needed to be activated that only a reclaimer could do. Her hand levitated towards the panel.

"Ah... you sure that's wise commander?" Michael said as he watched her out stretched hand moving slowly towards the panel.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained." She replied as she slowly palmed the glowing hologram.

There was a whine, the room seemed to shake along with multiple chiming sounds as the panel flashed, this in turn was followed up by a blinding white flash that engulfed the entire room, their visors automatically tinted to the maximum as it tried to block out the harsh light from hurting their eyes. In that one moment it was all over, the light receded as a pressure wave emanated from the column, knocking out both Spartans and the sangheili to the cold stone floor.

* * *

**Everfree Forest, Sunrise, Date Unknown**

Luna fell from the sky and towards the unkempt forest below, as something invisible had punched her hard in the gut. In the her last moments of consciousness as the forest floor came rushing up to meet her, Luna remembered why she was back here in the first place. She had turned back towards the forest as she had felt something she hadn't for so long. It was the feeling of defeat, loneliness, and the sense of going so soon.

Out cold, Luna slid along the wet open area of ground she had came down in, the colour of brown and reddish blue mud coated her face as she finally came to a grinding stop, the sun rays poking through the clouds as they illuminated her crashed position.

**Elsewhere…**

After raising the sun, princess Celestia had walked down one of the many halls that made up Canterlot castle and was about to head down the flight of stairs that lead out the front door when the invisible wave hit. Celestia saw a mirage of lights and the inky blackness of the night sky appear before her briefly as she suddenly passed out cold in front of two royal guards. The guards rushed over and tried to wake her as they called out for help for the downed Alicorn.

**…**

On a metallic platform deep within a room of dark, an Alicorn's eyes awoke in the blackness that surrounded her.

* * *

**A/N: I hope I didn't make the fight with the Manticore too easy for them, I didn't want to make it like a pushover. (Just for you to know, all the mythical creatures aside from the ponies featured in this crossover are given their true meanings and colours (behaviour) from what is described in 'wikipedia the free ****encyclopaedia' text and other sources.)**

**As you readers have probably have guessed... or not, something[s] will be given - in this crossover - the '_Halo treatment_'. But thats something to be discussed about in the chapters of later.**

**I'm also looking for a name for a UNSC Light Frigate, be creative.**

** Leave a review, again - point out my mistakes, tell me how you like it so far... more _'Discoveries'_ await in the times to come.**


	7. Chapter 6: Of Foreboding Skies

**********************Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or My Little Pony. They belong to Bungie/Microsoft/343 Industries and Hasbro respectfully.**

* * *

**Chapter 6: Of Foreboding Skies **

**Spartan Maria, ruin's interior, Forerunner pillar, 0745, October 8 2581 [UNSC/SE Military Calender]**

Maria's vision clouded with the swarm of suppressed memories from her past as she began to regain consciousness. She tried to move her arms to lift herself up but found she could not, she willed her legs to move but again they too refused. Her armour, she realised was in lock down. It was a protective measure incorporated in all GEN armour types to prevent significant injury from heavy impacts.

Unable to move and sprawled facedown on the stony ground, Maria quickly tried to recall what had happened as to where she was after the unexpected pulse from the pillar had hit. The memories that flooded in were ones she would rather forget, memories she would like to think it was just a dream but she knew they weren't and what they contained.

A brief white flash before her eyes recalled a memory that placed her on top of a large landing pad, black smoke and orange anti-aircraft fire spewed high into the air. The viewing of the sky changed to that she was now seeing black body armour covering her arms and a MA37 assault rifle cradled in her hands. Out in front of her there were other people crowding into awaiting pelicans and UNSC army soldiers nearby calmly directing them towards the waiting birds.

'… _Keep going don't stop, keep going don't stop, keep- yes sir the birds will keep coming, go. Keep going don't stop, '_

'_You'll be alright kid follow your mummy,'_

The roar of multiple jet engines cut through the air as a pair of pelicans, now filled with fleeing civilians, took off with a falcon escort as another two pelicans quickly arrived and replaced the empty spots they left.

'_Keep going don't stop, keep go-'_

Maria saw one of the army troopers directing a column of civilians towards an awaiting pelican when his head snapped back in a puff of red, a purple trail of plasma hung in the air where the trooper once stood.

'_Sniper! Find the bastard!'_

One trooper who had taken cover behind a small wall spotted the threat and pointed up at the nest.

'_Up there on the balcony!'_

'_Light the fucker up!'_

Maria could feel each individual round that was expended from the rifle as it kicked back against her shoulder, the bullets she fired impacted in and around the Covenant sniper's nest.

'_INCOMING!'_

A rain of wraith mortar hellfire came down and destroyed most of the evac pelicans that were still on the ground that were filled with civilians, families and the wounded, all gone in instant fiery destruction. The explosive boiling blast waves from the attack rushed out and threw her to the ground where she hit her head against the back of her helmet, knocking herself out. The terrifying memory cleared and showed she was still on the floor, still clad in her protective MJOLNIR armour, still unable to move.

She recalled she was with a special team, a team she was leading. Maria had a duty, the duty to protect those whom she led with through hell and back safely. Her vision began to come into focus as her eyes slowly but surely adjusted to the dark. The feeling of hopelessness and the feeling of losing someone triggered another memory she didn't want to relive ever again.

The memory showed her in a room in multistorey building the shattered glass windows overlooked a harbour bay. In the middle of the room on the floor along and with her team medic knelt over a still body of an ODST. She felt a gentle hand being placed on her shoulder, she turned to see who it was and saw another black armoured ODST, his helmet visor depolarised.

'… _Tyler's gone gunny, Sev did all he could.'_

Maria blinked, a tear trickled from the corner of one of her eyes. She tried to raise her team on the comm's only to discover that along with the armour lockdown, her heads up display, team comm and motion tracker was shutdown. The only thing that was active was the shield strength indicator, the red warning light of drained shields dimly pulsating before her eyes.

She began to hear other noises nearby, only this wasn't the drowned out voices from her memory, this noise however was close by. It sounded like something moving two pieces of metal against each other.

An orange burst of light jumped out a centimetre from her armour and the crackling energy slowly began to spread all over her body.

*_Vmmm_*

The noise of her shields recharging filled her with the briefest moments of relief as her heads up display rebooted from the energy pulse. Lines of code flashed briefly before her eyes as her motion tracker came online and pulsated. Instead of showing all clear the tracker picked out multiple red dots some were faded others were clear as day for a second then disappeared.

Armour in lockdown and facing the floor, she was helpless to defend herself against what the motion tracker shown threats and began to hyperventilate ignoring basic training to keep calm and focused. The action caused her to recall more supressed memories.

Maria found herself standing in a highway tunnel this time, burnt out civilian and military vehicles were sprawled across the road haphazardly, her silver grey helmet visor reflected the setting blood red sunlight as it flowed through the tunnel entrance. Over the team comm she could hear her team leader speaking to the squad.

'… _Our orders are to fall back to the UNSC light frigate __**Baku**__, its docked at the civilian shipyards just southeast of the city. Its got some precious cargo that needs to be protected for extraction.'_

'_LT that complete bullshit! You and we know it. The civilians we could save have been already evacuated there's nothing precious left on this rock.'_

'_Watch your tongue Sev. What this cargo contains could give us an upper hand that will help us win this war. You can guarantee my trust on that, it's also our ticket we can use to get out of here.'_

The metal noises were even louder now rousing her from the flashback and they were also followed by what sounded like weighty footsteps. The approaching sounds triggered another suppressed memory as it flashed before her, only this one showed multiple hauntingly blue plasma swords dancing in the air in the pitch-blackness of night.

'… _Maeh husk dee reemlol, shey shoul lemee moor harr!'_

'_Stay in the shadows and pray they don't see us.'_

The metal clicking noises stopped and Maria thought she heard something bend down next to her.

"Commander?" A clear male voiced asked.

She could feel herself being rolled over and then her helmet being taken off. Her helmet came off with a _hiss_ as it disconnected from her armour. Cool unfiltered fresh air flowed against her face and two blurred shapes danced before her eyes. Another flashback from her past transported her standing in the back of a pelican, assault rifle raised and firing sustained bursts out into the sky along with another ODST.

'…_Banshees! We've got multiple banshees on our tail!'_

Maria saw blue plasma bolts from the purple planes zip into the open bay of their flying pelican.

'_I can tell Sev! This crate wasn't designed to dogfight with its back end in the fire! Dingo! Get those son-of-a-bitches off my tail!'_

'_On it sir, clear back blast!'_

Out of the corner of her visor, Maria saw the rocket eject from its tube and left a spiralling smoke trail that betrayed its point of origin into one of the chasing banshees. The purple craft visibly disintegrated in a fiery explosion when the explosive rammed headlong into its canopy and detonated. The dazzling flash of the explosion brought her back to reality.

"Pulse is erratic, quickly hand me that med pack," The distant male voice that was not part of her continual flashbacks continued to speak as she felt a jab of pain near her neck along with the sensation of ice rushing throughout her body dredging along another heart wrenching memory.

She found herself this time on the bridge of a UNSC frigate standing in the cold recycled air of the ship, the planet she helped evacuate countless civilians off world completely filled the central view screen, its once beautiful surface of green and blue was now on fire as black angry red scars covered half the planets surface. Above the world she could see multiple silver purple ships of huge Covenant warships glide over its burning surface as they spewed trails of plasma fire from their bellies.

She had never seen a planet get glassed before and it would not be the last as she turned her attention to another view screen, this time showing a zoomed in visual of the system's main body.

Reach.

Humanities last stronghold before earth was swarmed with Covenant warships as they too started their glassing runs of its surface.

'… _Jump co-ordinates randomised as per Cole protocol article one, sir.'_

'_The cargo is secured and we are ready to jump to slipspace on your orders captain.'_

She saw that the captain of the ship posture was unnaturally calm and collected in the face of such a terrible defeat and loss, he didn't even flinch one bit when the emergency bridge lights flashed red in alert, instead he just turned calmly to his weapons officer who relayed the information of what his sensors were telling to him.

'_Captain, sir! Seven Covenant CCS battlecruiser and corvette analogues have been spotted and are accelerating towards us to intercept!'_

'_They want their grand prize back. Make the jump before they lock onto our jump vector.'_

Maria turned to look behind her and saw that her team leader was there, his helmet off showing everyone on the bridge his Korean chiselled features while he was conversing with the frigate's second-in-command. Her team leader finished talking with the commander and looked directly at her, strange bright blue cyan eyes looking directly into hers.

The ship shuddered as it slipped through the portal it tore in subspace. The inky black confines of slipspace now showing up on the multiple view screens that once displayed the horrifying power the Covenant had wielded against the planets surface.

Maria's armour finally came out of lockdown and she rose from her prone form into an upright sitting position, beads of sweat trickled down her face and onto her armour chest plate. Her blurred vision from the tears that had formed from the suppressed memories cleared to show two distinctive armoured figures in front of her, Spartan Michael Lorenski and SpecOps Xytas 'Doravoai.

She noticed that Michael was crouched slightly next to her, his helmet off and along with a PDA he was holding in his hand. The metal sounds Maria had heard while she was on the floor, she began to realise, was her team getting up and coming to her but it didn't explain as to why multiple red dots showed up on her motion tracker for those briefest of seconds.

Michael shimmied closer to get a better readout on his medical PDA.

"Commander," He said in a concerned voice, rousing Maria from her far off distant stare. "are you ok?"

Maria visibly swallowed as she tried to get her bearings. The room that she had dropped down with Xytas to join Michael was previously just darkness and they needed their helmet lights to see. Now the room was entirely illuminated with multiple soft pale blue lights emanating from the ceiling and the flagstones that covered the floor now had blue lines weaving through the cracks.

Maria reached for her helmet that had been placed next to her and lifted it up shakily. Michael and Xytas watched by silently.

Maria stared at her reflected self in the orange visor for a few minutes as she recalled the briefest of memory fragments before she calmly flipped the helmet around and secured it back into place.

"I'm ok." Maria said as she breathed out, the hint of uneasiness seeping through her voice as she slowly stood up.

A wave of apprehension swept across Michaels face briefly as he picked up his own helmet and slipped it on. He reached over and picked up his armoured pack and the commanders XM380 he had set next to it. Michael offered the rifle over to her.

Maria gingerly took hold of the offered weapon, the tiny sensors in her armoured hands interfaced with the weapon as they transmitted the informational readout about its operations to her HUD.

Michael noticed that the commander was hesitant and quite shaken; what ever the energy pulse did to affect her he wouldn't like to experience it as well.

"The pulse from the pillar collapsed parts of the roof and some of the surrounding walls." Michael said as he watched Maria walk down the hall to where they dropped down and the large pile of stone rubble and thick wooden beams blocking the way.

Michael observed Maria as she tried to shift one the thick broken support beams, only for the movement to cause some more dust and rubble to fall down.

"I think it may have also collapsed the hallway above this room as well." Michael said.

"Well this place is Forerunner built, there's always more than one exit." Maria said as she returned back over to the now activated pillar, its holopanel covered with unrecognisable symbols that shifted their places every so often.

"I don't think they counted on someone building on top of the place."

"What do you mean?" She turned her head to look at him as he walked up beside her to observe the pillar as well.

"When I was looking for the way up to the next level before I fell down through the weak spot in the floor, I began noticing that the hallways were too narrow and the ceiling height was all wrong. Not Forerunner at all."

"The drone did match up with some records of human design."

"Partial human design. I don't think our ancient human counterparts before the great journey ever built the structure above us." He said, pointing a finger towards the high ceiling and what obviously was built on the other side.

Xytas came up alongside Michael and voiced his own concerns about the subject.

"The bridge that crossed the chasm then Spartan."

Michael nodded in agreement.

"That bridge looked way to green to have been built all those centuries ago and still be in one piece."

"It still didn't hold your weight."

"A Spartans weight no but something else?" Michael nodded once again. "Most definitely a yes."

Maria placed a hand up to her helmeted chin and started thinking.

"Well we know the Reformed Covenant didn't build it," she said thinking what else it could be. "Could it be the remains of some of the New Colonial Alliance we had skipped over?" She asked, directing her questions over at Xytas.

"If those heretics had settled on this world then this reformed Covenant Remnant presence would be more noticeable across this landmass." He said anger clearly laced within his voice. The NCA caused a lot of trouble when they tried to dishonourably kill a group of Sangheili councillors with a HAVOK nuke instead of sending assassins to do the job.

"The San'Shyuum?"

"No." He said simply.

"The Brutes then?"

"I don't think so, they weigh as much as we do," Michael said as began walking over to one of the walls of the room. "Do you think the _**Echo**_ would know commander?"

"Even if they did know about the bridge and hazarded a guess, we wouldn't know. We're too far underground to reach them or for them to reach us."

Michael placed his hands up against the wall he had walked over to and started feeling along it to try and find some sort of seem that equalled to an exit or some secret panel that allowed him access to some sort of controls. Maria watched him slowly walk along its length, feeling up and down looking for a way out.

"You think your see seven would-"

"Won't be enough." He said when pounded the wall with his fist making a dull _thump_, anticipating the question Maria was asking about.

Xytas, who was idling behind Maria, decided to give the Spartan a helping hand and started in the opposite direction when Maria's motion tracker went wild with activity.

Red dots started to sway in towards the middle of the circle. She looked in the direction as to where the sudden motion was coming from. It was coming from behind the wall where Michael and Xytas had been searching along. She raised her rifle and pointed it towards the wall.

The both of them was busily feeling up and down the wall then their motion trackers as well went wild with red targets. Xytas and Michael quickly backed away from the wall and pointed their rifles over at it.

The seconds ticked away as the dots moved in closer, it seemed the dots to be almost on top of them they stopped presumably just behind the wall. Both Spartans and the Sangheili tightened their grip on their weapons, bracing themselves for the soon to be firefight.

The seconds continued to tick away as the tension in the air rose when no more movement showed up on their trackers.

Michael flinched when the wall he had searched along started folding upon its self in geometric patterns as it slowly revealed a wide blue-lit passageway beyond it. Hovering in the centre of the doorway were seven metallic machines, their twin boom like arms spread wide and their single glowing blue light in the centre looking directly back at them.

"Sentinels!" Michael exclaimed as he quickly aimed down his scope at the middle aggressor and began to squeeze trigger.

* * *

**Everfree Forest, Date Unknown**

It had to have been a dream she had entered, it just had to be… wasn't it?

Luna could barely remember anything in the sequences that occurred. Everything she saw within it was more often blurred with many distorted running shapes and bright burning lights than the relatively easier clear dreams he had always entered before this, even the beginning of the end of the dream was overly strange, everything she observed that wasn't blurred out to unrecognition was covered in a silver metallic sheen and a single black covered tall figure stood in the centre of it all, a dark beacon against the light.

The sun had now risen above the horizon and its glorious warming rays were shining through the broken clouds, Luna could begin to feel the warmth of the rays warm her sodden mood as she shakily stood up from the cold muddy ground after coming down in the area.

She could feel her lips were moist and she could hardly see out of her own left eye, the smell of wet soil from the ground quite noticeable. Luna wiped a hoof across her face to wipe away the muddy substance that was there. In the light of the morning sun she brought her hoof halfway back down and could see that her foreleg she used to remove the dirt was smeared with a reddish blue colour, Luna turned her attention to the ground beneath her and saw the same colour was staining it.

In the centre of the clearing she could see a very dark patch of the colour along with deep drag marks leading away from the spot towards the edge of the forest. She followed the marks out of curiosity and once again regretted doing so, lying underneath a smattering of leaves in a hastily poor attempt to hide it was the lifeless body of a manticore or what was left of it.

Luna walked around the front to get a better angle. The entire manticore's face was practically non-existent, just burnt mush of dark red muscle, burnt hair and white flesh remained. She walked towards its tail end and spotted the manticore was completely missing the tip of its tail, a clean cut evident where the stinger had once connected.

She looked back up the body and saw a wide deep gash just above its shoulder, a river of bluish purple liquid had dried up along its leg and collected in a pool of the liquid at the base of its paw. Luna quickly looked back to her foreleg she had used to clear the coloured mud from her face and discovered it matched the colour that had come from the gash wound.

It was the manticore's blood.

The same coloured blood that was soaked into the ground in the clearing, the same colour that is in the mud and the same colour that covered her foreleg. Luna bulked at the revelation and ran away from the lifeless body back into the glaring sunshine tears forming in her eyes. Distraught and in distress she fell to the ground not caring the slightest anymore that she was kneeling in the manticore's blood. She shook as she breathed raggedly and wept quietly to herself, the tears that formed flowed down her cheeks and added them to the already blood ground.

Luna slowly opened her eyes, the tears blurring her vision as she looked down at the ground in front of her. She needed to find out why this tragedy happened. She had a duty to commit to, a duty she shared along with her sister and that duty wasn't kneeling here crying like a lost abandoned filly, it was a duty to protect those from the horrors such as this.

Luna's stomach churned and her head felt light as a feather when she shakily stood up from the ground. Her tears dried up as she walked back over to the deep coloured patch of ground in the middle of the clearing she had come down in and gave it a look over once more.

She gazed over the bloody drag marks and over towards the narrow pass in the mountain range and noticed there was a bare patch that was not covered in grass within the centre of this bare patch she noticed there was a large two toed hoof print. The print looked nothing like her own, it looked nothing like a dragon print nor was it any other animal print she had seen or observed before, this was completely new to her.

Luna placed one of her own hooves just above the centre of the print it and saw it was much larger than her own. After further observation she guessed it would take at least six or more of her own sized hooves to completely fill the entire imprint.

She wished she had brought along a quill and some paper to make a sketch of the print so she could prove what she had seen when she returned to Canterlot to tell her sister. She looked over at the print in the bare patch of dirt and recalled about what had happened lately when she heard what sounded like a low hum which gradually increased into a high pitched whine the closer it got, the wailing was close, very close then as suddenly as the sound had came, it faded away.

Luna looked to the clouds above her and saw something very large had passed through them by the way it had left streaks of white parted clouds in its wake. The way the streaks were pointing to she didn't like at all, they were pointing in the direction of the old castle where she once resided with her sister before her selfish betrayal. This sound she heard might hold the answers she was looking for.

Luna spread her great wings for flight and again took to the skies, this time she believed hopefully she could find all the answers to her current dilemmas.

* * *

**Outskirts of Ponyville, Date Unknown**

Of the few places where the sun could shine though the thick clouds, the one place it just happened to light up was the ground beneath the tree Rainbow Dash was resting under. The glaring bright sunlight tickled her face with its warming heat as she painfully woke up. The muscles throughout her body ached as she stood up using the tree trunk as additional support.

Dash wiped the remaining sleep from her eyes and began to look over her body. Showing up in some places along her legs and sides were multi-coloured misshapen circles, bruises from the rough flight she took while chasing that mysterious flying craft in the very early hours of the morning, if it was this bad on her body then her face must've been a mess. To confirm that this was the case she walked over to the nearby stream to get a reflection of herself in the water.

Her face was indeed a total mess, the right side of her face in particular her eye had a thin purple ring around it. She turned her head to get a side on view of the eye and noticed that her hair was indeed a mess as well. Instead of being straight and groomed to her liking, it was all out of place and the tips of some of her hair were scorched. If Rarity saw her in this state she would probably freak and pass out.

"Hey there Rainbow, didn't think yall be down here already." Somepony said from behind her with an evident southern drawl.

Dash turned her relatively good side to face the pony that was approaching her from behind.

Applejack approached Rainbow Dash with a wide grin she usually sported upon her face, a grin that quickly changed to one of concern when she noticed the bruises along Dash's legs and body.

"Gosh what happened to you? It looks like you tried to wrangle with a fork of lightning and lost," She winced as Dash fully turned around to show the rest of her battered and bruised body. "Badly."

"I know what you're thinking about but this," Dash said indicating to her face. "Isn't the case."

"Then what is the case then?" Applejack asked inquisitively.

Dash completely knew that lying directly to her face was out of the question. As one of the holders of the elements of harmony she represented the element of honesty, a trait she had allowed her to almost tell the difference from a lie from the truth.

Dash wondered what would happen when she did tell her what she saw and would she be able to know the difference then. It didn't matter anyway and spilled the events that transpired to her a few hours ago that led to her current state.

Applejack was completely silent even when Dash told her recount of the chasing of the large flying object. When she finished her tale of events Applejack was completely speechless, she couldn't tell whether it was the truth or not, the fact the object Dash chased was faster than her own sonic rainboom or the fact it dumped two cylindrical objects in the worst place of all and Rainbow wanted her help in retrieving some answers from as to where it came from.

After five minutes of complete silence Dash decided now was the best time to break it, having given Applejack enough time to think it over.

"Come on its not that far in."

"It still doesn't make it anymore easier. You know that place gives me the creeps."

Dash turned away from the creek and headed towards the path that led all the way into the Everfree forest.

"You've got me to keep you company."

Applejack hesitated near the waters edge and looked at her reflected self then back to the shrinking figure of rainbow as she continued to walk along the path.

'_Darn it Rainbow.'_ She thought to herself and galloped after her.

"You know I don't like this and why aren't you flying? I thought you hate walking." Applejack said as she drew up next to Dash.

"I think I hurt my wings when I chased that flying thing, I don't want wind up in hospital like last time."

"I have a bad feeling about this." She muttered to Dash.

"Relax, what could possibly go wrong?" She said to her as they walked the path together towards the beginnings of the forest.

* * *

**Spartan Michael,** **ruin's interior, Forerunner pillar, 0926, October 8 2581 [UNSC/SE Military Calender]**

As soon as the wall that was now a door fully retracted away revealing the contacts his motion tracker had picked up, Michaels mind and body went into overdrive.

"Sentinels!" He said as he warned the others, raised his rifle and drew a bead on the central aggressor and started to pull on the trigger.

"Wait, hold fire! They're not a threat!" Maria shouted as she held out her hand out to both Michael and Xytas to stand down as she noticed the red dots on her motion tracker quickly change to that of yellow.

Michael had a scant millimetre to go on the trigger before the weapon fully fired as he saw the wisdom of his commander's words and released the pressure.

Of the seven aggressor sentinels that hovered in the centre of the newly revealed doorway, only four of them drifted into the room towards the pillar and the rubble that had collapsed in the only hallway. The three that remained turned about and headed back down the way they had presumably came from. When the two Spartans and Sangheili didn't follow immediately one of the three sentinels stopped and looked back.

"I think they want us to follow them commander." He said turning his head back towards the commander, his rifle now at rest down by his side.

"We don't exactly have a choice in the matter," Maria said to the rest of her team. "The doorway they opened is the only way out as I see it."

Xytas, who was watching the events that unfolded nearby, decided that following the sentinels was the best option and walked out through the newly formed doorway. Maria and Michael watched him exit and also came to the conclusion that they should also follow, though trusting the flying machines on where their loyalty on priorities lay, would be considered for another time.

The hallway the team was led through was the usual typical outcome when one encountered Forerunner architecture, tall ceilings with angled support beams, soft blue lights and the constant silver metallic sheen that coated every possible surface they saw from floor to ceiling.

The three aggressor sentinels were still leading the team onward down the wide hallways when one of them split off from the group and headed towards a small shaft halfway up one of the walls and disappeared into it, the small opening it entered closed up immediately behind it leaving no trace that the tunnel even existed there in the first place.

The team continued to follow the two remaining sentinels down hallways and around downward sloping corners until they reached a three-way junction, to which all of the doors that branched off were closed. The sentinel that disappeared from a while ago re-emerged from a new hole just above one of the closed doors and fired a thin blue beam onto the central part of the door in front of the group. The doorway opened up to reveal a large platform with a holographic panel in the middle and a long large shaft that stretched up extremely high.

The three aggressor sentinels that had accompanied them disappeared in two separate vanishing acts, two of them disappeared in what looked like slipspace translocations of swirls of dark blue light while the other simply rotated around and sped off down another newly revealed hallway to which its door the sentinel passed through immediately closed behind it, preventing the Spartans and Sangheili from following it.

"I guess this is the way out." Michael said as he stepped up on the wide platform with the others and looked up above them.

Maria looked at the holographic Forerunner panel in the centre of the platform, observed them for a moment before she reached out and touched one of the many glowing symbols.

"I dearly hope so." She said, hoping she had touched the right Forerunner word symbol for 'up'.

The platform lurched downwards suddenly before it, to their relief, began to rapidly ascend upwards. The ride up the shaft was quick and quiet without anymore further distractions. It wasn't long before the group heard a low grinding humming noise coming from somewhere above them, the group looked up and saw that the 'ceiling' covering the shaft began to retract in an anti-clockwise rotation as bright light from the other side poured in.

The elevator platform rose out of the ground and ground to a halt in the centre of a familiar area, the lift had taken them to the large cavernous long room with the two stone thrones at one end and the large pile of debris at the other.

"Huh, well that was rather interesting." Michael said in a chipper voice as he stepped off the lift platform and onto the flagstone covered ground with the faintest blue light emanating through the cracks.

Maria scoffed and radioed in the _**Echo **_to deliver her report. Something was very wrong when when it connected immediately. She could hear it but she couldn't broadcast.

"_Raptor six report in. This is a priority one hail, come in Sierra Whiskey three two eight-"_

The signal suddenly dropped and returned a second later only now it came through static riddled, distorted and dropping every so often.

"_-niner t** *our, if you're receiving this message S*ARS pi-i-ick-cked up en**gy sig- **ght of two sp***ts *** **antom **ading **wards your loc- **ur ago, not long after you hea*** *nto the stru***re we detect*** massive power spike emanating from the ****et's surface exactly were- *re hea**** right towards it. ** will **y to gi** you as **ch info***- nergy sig****res co-comes thr-r-r-ough. This *****ge will repeat and- every half **** at r-r-ran***** selected intervals."_

A loud whining sound that the group knew all too well began to echo throughout the halls of the building ruins. It was the unmistakeable sound of a phantom's engines revving as it was coming in to land.

"We've got trouble." Maria said as she ran down the hallway that took her to the front entrance as the rest of the team sprinted after her.

Michael pressed his back firmly against one of the support columns that lined the interior of the hall and activated his active camouflage, the light bending energy spread across his armour as he disappeared from sight, only the faintest outline of a distortion could be seen as he moved out behind the column and towards one of the four windowless archways near the main door of the building.

Out in the distance and on the other side of the chasm that separated the ruins from the grassy fields were large groups of Covenant Remnant soldiers, very recently dropped off and advancing towards the ruins with a quick pace. From his new position, Michael observed the approaching enemy through the scope on his XM380 and began to take observational notes on their strength as well as any potential weaknesses.

He saw one group of Covie soldiers crest a hill left of his vision and zoomed in on them.

"What have we got people?" Maria asked quietly out over the comm's.

"I've got two Elite Warriors along with three Elite Commanders and… this doesn't bode well."

"What do you see lieutenant?"

"I count at least three groups of Remnant Covies, of two of the which are led by one golden armoured Elite Warrior along with one blue Elite Commander," Michael grunted as he changed positions to another support column to get a look at the lead group of enemy soldiers.

"The lead group is lead by an Elite Zealot and another Commander. Bad part of all of this is they're leading lances of five T'vaoan Skirmishers per group,"

Xytas chipped in on what he was seeing as well. "All these Remnant Heretics and the Skirmishers are armed with needle rifles and plasma pistols," He said as Michael quickly shifted his rifle to focus in on the leading lance.

"And this Remnant Zealot is leading them here with his sword out but not active."

Twenty-one enemy combatants comprised of Elite and Skirmishers, all of which were heading towards her and her team. The odds didn't look all that complicated considering these Covie bastards have no idea they what was in store for them.

"Right here's the plan," Maria began to outline her plan to her team. "Lieutenant, I want you to go find a room in the left wing of the main entrance doorway with good sightlines across the courtyard."

"You got it commander." He said as he followed the commander's orders and headed down the left branching hallway.

"Xytas, I want you to do the same but mirror the lieutenants wing on the opposite side so that we can get overlapping fields of fire."

"It will be done." The Sangheili nodded which Maria saw it as a moving shimmer and left down the right branching hallway.

As she watched the shimmering figures of the two of them vanish down the adjoining hallways she saw that there was a large hole in the ceiling, it big enough for her to fit though and a huge sloped mound of fallen debris that was high enough for her to climb the pile and haul herself through the hole and onto the second floor.

There was no overhead cover for the second floor in this particular section of the ruins. All that was left was a few arching support columns that once supported a roof of some sort, the walls that once divided rooms from hallways and the glassless windows that looked out over to the outside world.

Maria found a suitable advantage point that gave her a good view of the front courtyard below and the top of the low hills on the other side of the chasm as well as good cover if she needed to get out of harms way when they would eventually target her position. She laid her assault rifle down next to her, unclamped the XM110 sniper rifle from her back, rested it on the glassless windowsill, looked through the scope and picked out an approaching champion skirmisher armed with a needle rifle. Maria keyed the team comm.

"Gentlemen, on my shot you are weapons free. Just remember that when you do, the active cameo will deactivate after shooting a few rounds but also leave no Covenant bastard standing." She said over the comm as two blue lights appeared upon her HUD. _Acknowledged_. Maria allowed a small smile to spread across her face.

Luna soared high over the mountainous ranges that made up most of Everfree forest as she flew into the next valley that she once claimed home too, she expected to find in the fields below just the answer to her problems, not an entirely new complicated one.

Down below and advancing towards the castle Luna saw many bipedal creatures with very long purple coloured objects cradled to their chests. Of the entire grouping she saw, six of them stood out the most. They were covered entirely in some sort of coloured metal armour some of which were more striking than others, the armour they wore was nothing like the armour worn by the royal guard, not even close.

As Luna soared over the group and circled she looked down at each creature's feet, the smaller ones that were stooped over and that looked like large flightless birds had claws but the much larger ones, the ones covered head to hoof in shiny metal armour had large two toed feet, the same kind she had seen in the patch of dirt from earlier.

'_So these creatures hoof prints are the ones responsible for the manticore's death.' _Luna thought to herself as she continued to circle the large bipedal group who had seemed to have stopped and was now looking up at her, the long slender objects they had held in their hands were pointed up at her as well.

From up here, Luna assumed to herself that the long slender objects the creatures carried were very short spears, completely harmless to her at this height as she prepared to circle back and fly over them for a third time. As she circled back for the third pass she wasn't prepared in the slightest of what happened next.

Michael was watching a lance of skirmishers as they approached the chasm when he noticed a small black dot appear over the mountaintops behind the Covies. As the black object started to grow in size, Michael had a strange strong gut feeling about it and switched from one of the skirmishes he was tracking to the unknown contact.

'_What the?' _

Through the scope the object transformed from a blurred dot to that of something with large wings, four long legs and what looked like some sort of flowing tail as this thing arrived and circled the Remnant Covie soldiers below.

Michael activated his comm to call the commander and report in what he was seeing when the radio emitted an ear-piercing screeching sound of static causing him to grit his teeth together in pain as the noise assaulted his ears. He quickly double checked his communications gear and found there was nothing jamming it or anything else out of the ordinary.

Perhaps it was the Forerunner structure below playing havoc with their communications gear. He quickly dismissed the conclusion when he remembered that their radios worked just fine so it had to be something else.

Michael looked back through his scope at this new flying creature, which was much now closer and lower now than it was from before. As the creature flew over the Covie soldiers yet again, like an eagle circling for a weak link in its prey, he caught a full on look of its entire body and face through the assault rifle's scope.

Michael quickly zoomed out and blinked rapidly, trying to clear his mind as to what he thought he just saw. Surly he must have been hallucinating, no way such a thing could exist, he could've sworn he looked directly at a flying midnight coloured horse with weird flowing hair and a horn.

The sound of firing needle rifles, humming plasma pistols filled the air. Michael instinctively shielded himself below the lip of his room's arcing window from the sound of the weapons fire. He quickly deduced that he himself wasn't the one being targeted nor was it the structure they were all positioned in.

No, it was the purple flying horse like creature he had been observing that the Covies decided to engage and filled the sky around the creature with the colours of green and bright pink.

The air around Luna came alive with the hissing popping sounds as the collected bipedal creatures below discharged their weapons at her. Three long slender pink crystals passed mere inches in front of her nose and shattered into a pink mist a meter above her.

In shock from suddenly seeing the shards pass directly by her nose, Luna momentarily forgot where she going and flew directly into a barrage of sizzling green bolts. She yelped out in intense pain as some of the bolts grazed and glanced up against her back legs, the hot searing pain was so much it felt like she was placing her backside into a scorching forest fire.

Luna needed to get out of harms way quickly as she weaved back a forth across the sky from whatever painful weapons these creatures below were wielding against her as more of these pink crystals came up from below and zipped past.

The once majestic castle ahead, still in complete ruins, offered the only protection she could think of and banked over down towards it, when she banked over one of her wings caught two of the slender pink crystal shards in it, Luna thought they would just fragment and not do much just like to ones that had been missing her but that wasn't the case.

The pink shards exploded with such force it shattered every bone in her wing and sent any remaining pink crystal fragments directly into her side drawing blood. With one wing completely broken, her back legs scorched and one side of her body bleeding in complete agony Luna had no way of slowing down let alone pull up safely to land as the ground once again for the second time for the day rushed up to greet her like an old friend.

Luna hit the ground, hard, kicking up a cloud of dirt and rock as she slid into the centre of the courtyard, her wing that was broken by the crystal shards now trapped beneath her body. When the dust eventually settled she tried her best to get back up and gallop towards the doors of the castle only to be forced back down by something very heavy stepping on her back, she twisted her head around to get a look at what had stepped on her and saw one of the two toed tall armoured creatures looking directly back at her.

Wide eyed and in excruciating pain, Luna struggled to free herself from the bipedal creature's heavy foot that pinned her to the ground as the large bird like animals she had seen from the sky leaped over the low walls and spread out through the ruins of the courtyard. Now closer she saw that this monster standing on top of her was mostly encased with maroon red armour and on top of its helmet four purple gleaming lights.

Luna saw one of its hands flick downward and twin blue blades of light appeared out of thin air out of an cylinder object it held in its hand as it leaned down towards her bringing the hauntingly glowing blade ever closer to her face.

Luna could feel the heat flow off the crackling sword as it neared ever closer to her body. Luna was appallingly shocked when this monster laughed in pure delight at her fear and pain she was in and then spoke to her in a dialect she never heard before let alone even understand.

"_Rol harr mi, sarr woll yarr lee." _

Luna desperate to protect her self summoned up a powerful spell and put as much energy she could muster into it and fired at the monster, knocking it off her to the ground. Luna stared back in horrified disbelief when the creature quickly shook off the disorientation of being hit with the spell, a spell that should've thrown it quite a distance, growled loudly and pointed one of its four fingered hands in what seemed was anger at her for striking back.

"_Lurr raah seeh ree miree rarll!"_

The infuriated beast stomped down hard on Luna's body this time breaking most of the bones in her good wing as it brought its glowing blade back to strike, its entire armoured body completely covered with strange arcing blue lightning.

Tears rolled down her cheeks from the overwhelming pain when Luna shut her eyes as the blade came at her in a violent downward swing. In the seconds left she only wished she could've seen her sister one last time before she had set out to the Everfree forest or had even warned her about what she saw in the vision she had. She heard what sounded like a sizzling sound pass close overhead and could feel the searing heat of the bade near her. This was the end.

The seconds strangely ticked by without the burning horror of the blade entering her body. Luna cracked open her eyes to reveal that the monster was still over her but its blade had halted inches from her neck and its entire body looked unbalanced. The blade the creature was going to use to kill her vanished back into the object it held in its hand and the body of the bipedal creature collapsed in an ungraceful heap next to her.

Up even closer Luna could see two eye slits in the helmet the monster used to see out and saw two wide open lifeless eyes staring back at her, in the centre of its helmet there was a neat round hole with deep purple liquid slowly seeping out from it.

Lying down on the second floor of the building Maria witnessed whatever the Remnant Covies were suddenly firing at crash down into the middle of the ruined courtyard, never in her own life had she expected to see a large midnight coloured horse with wings, a horn like the extinct narwhal and a purple mane that seemed to flow on its own accord when the dust eventually settled.

Sidetracked, she didn't know that the Covies had already crossed over the chasm until she saw the Remnant Zealot that was leading the first lance place his right boot down on the surprisingly alive body of the strange horse and activated his energy sword.

Maria faintly heard the Zealot gloat as the strange horse like animal that was beneath his boot squirmed in horrified shock as it tried to desperately free itself. As the elite brought its energy sword in closer to toy with his soon to be kill Maria saw the creature's horn glow a bright cobalt blue and discharged some sort of energy directly into the elite's chest, sending the him tumbling off the horse's body and onto the ground, his energy shields completely drained.

Pissed off, the Zealot got back to his feet and angrily stomped hard back down on the horse's body, the sounds of something snapping under the elites foot made the strange horse cry out in a horrific squeal that it sounded disturbingly almost human.

Unwillingly wanting to watch the torture go on any further, Maria placed her sniper sights on the Zealot's head and pulled the trigger, the powerful sapphire blue beam of energy discharged from the end of the barrel and pieced through the front of its helmet, bringing along pieces of charred flesh and bits of molten metal as it exited out the back of the elite's cranium.

The once alive Zealot remained standing upright for a full minute before collapsing right next to the strange horse as blue bolts fired by two XM380 assault rifles on burst fire whizzed by over its head into the collected and surprised shocked skirmishers and their remaining elite leaders standing around in the courtyard.

Luna craned her head around to try and see who had shockingly killed the monster and evidently saved her life when the air was filled with bright blue beams of light. The coloured light impacted left and right into the large bird like creatures, their heads snapping back violently as the blue beams hit them. Luna closed her eyes and cried in petrified fear as the cacophony of different loud sounds she never heard before assaulted her ears.

In his room in the right hand wing of the building that overlooked the courtyard, Xytas nailed five confused skirmishers each with a precise double tap to the brainpan when a gold armoured elite spotted where the fire was coming from and hurled a plasma grenade over in his direction. Xytas ducked as the grenade sailed through the large window and landed just near the door that led out into the hallway.

Xytas knew that the grenade didn't have enough power to kill him but in these close quarters, when it detonated, would remove most if not all of his energy shielding.

Thinking quickly, Xytas leaped out through the window and quickly took cover behind a low wall when the grenade went off a second later. The room he had leaped out of old ceiling collapsed inwards on itself from being weakened by the blast and completely filled the room with stone bricks and rubble.

After killing the elite Zealot and a few scattered skirmishers from her sniper nest, Maria distinctively heard the muffled sound of a plasma grenade detonating quickly followed by what sounded like a landslide of falling rock and rubble. Out of the corner of her eye she saw one of the golden elites standing out in the open looking over at a dust filled area. Maria shifted her rifle, steadily placed the crosshairs on the elites forehead and squeezed the trigger.

Over the lip of his wall, Xytas could see the golden elite that threw the plasma grenade take cover behind a dead tree narrowly avoiding a lance of blue energy from a XM110 sniper rifle. Xytas unclipped his plasma pistol and over charged it, taking careful aim at the golden elite that then dove out of cover and sprinted out towards his wall.

The Remnant Covie must've had a sixth sense because when she fired the elite dove out of the way behind a hollow dead tree, narrowly avoiding her shot. Maria cursed at the elite's luck and prepared to take a second shot, this time through the tree, when her shields fared from needle and plasma fire.

In the courtyard below a pair of skirmishers and one of the other two golden elites zeroed in on her position and had started firing through the Spartan's window.

Xytas released the trigger, firing off the ball of green energy into the chest of the charging elite, it energy shields immediately winked out allowing Xytas, who had vaulted the low wall, to deliver a powerful swipe with an energy dagger from his left gauntlet across the heretics neck region. The golden elite fell to its knees, dropping its needle rifle as it groped pathetically at its partially severed neck when Xytas mercifully placed two plasma bolts to the back of the head, ending its worthless struggle to cling to life.

On the opposite side of the courtyard, Michael was putting out a hell of hurt on the Covies. When Maria dropped the Zealot with a beam lance to its brain he immediately set to work on dropping the two blue armoured elites and the grouping of seven skirmishers that loosely surrounded them as they watched their leading commanding Zealot play with the weird fallen flying horse.

One of the elite's collapsed dead when his energy shielding promptly failed as a torrent of blue bolts from Michael's assault rifle tore up and into the side of its body. In a twist of unfortunate fate of the skirmishers that were standing too close to the elite, one of them was crushed to death when the body collapsed on top of him.

The other blue clad elite met a similar fate when a blue lance of energy that was fired from the opposite end of the courtyard cut into its side, the elite's shields flickered out allowing Michael to finish it off with a burst to the head from his rifle.

After clearing his side and providing additional sniper support to Michael, Xytas switched back to his assault rifle and focused in on any skirmishers that remained in the centre of the courtyard, their moderate light purple blood staining the ground underneath them as they fell to the ground dead, few of the skirmishers he had shot twitched their last moments of existence.

The cacophony of the loud noises that assaulted her ears seemed to lessen as time flowed ever forward, never stopping never slowing. Luna wept quietly to herself as she dwelled on how could something so terrible and horrifying like this could happen to her. She was one of the powerful co-rulers of the peaceful lands of Equestria along with her sister, yet these unknown creatures she had never laid eyes on before took her down so easily that when the maroon armoured creature that once stood above and laughed at her pathetic weakness, Luna realised that she meant nothing to these monsters that attacked her, whether that be alive or dead.

Maria rolled away from the window when the elite and accompanying skirmishers sprinted for the entrance. She checked her motion sensor and found it malfunctioning terribly, it was scrambled mess of friendly and foe dots appearing all over it, Maria turned the useless tracker off and dropped down through the hole in the floor she used to gain access to the second level.

Luna opened her eyes and looked around the area around her, the bodies of the large bird creatures lay scattered around on their backs their eyes and mouths open wide to the light grey sky above. She craned her head back up to gaze towards the main doors that led into the ruined castle.

As Maria dropped to the bottom she crushed the skull of one of the skirmishers that had climbed the loose pile of fallen rock debris to get up to the Spartan. Acting on pure instinct, Maria whipped out her silenced M6C sidearm and put a trio of rounds in the other skirmisher who had decided to stay at the bottom of the pile and follow up later.

Xytas had retreated back to the low wall he had hidden behind after his room collapsed when saw the last remaining golden elite head towards the entrance doorway. Knowing where the heretic had to have been going for he tried warning Maria over the comm's. All he got in return was an earful of squealing static. Quickly thinking he spotted something off to the side that he could use to his advantage.

"Demon!" The golden elite shouted loudly as he spotted Maria standing over near the skirmisher's dead body she had shot at the bottom of the debris pile. The elite unclipped both his plasma pistols and unleashed a wave of plasma fire at the Spartan.

Maria dove into cover behind a stone support pillar but not before taking a smattering of the shots to her shields, draining them into the red.

The golden elite approached her pillar smugly, fully knowing well he had drained all of the Spartans shields with his pistols.

"Come demon, face your-" The Covie didn't get to finish his words as he rounded the pillar he thought the Spartan was hiding behind when an armoured boot was delivered to his solar plexus, knocking the elite sprawling out onto the floor over by the main entrance.

She could feel that her body was in too much pain to even attempt to drag herself to safety towards the once welcoming doors of the building when she saw one of the golden armoured monsters come into view from the behind the entrance, its armour completely covered in sparking blue lightning when it fell to the floor, loudly growling at something that was hiding out of her view.

Maria emerged from behind a different pillar, her active camouflage disengaging and carefully walked over to the elite, her pistol drawn and aimed at its face.

Coming out from behind the arching doorway entrance and again entirely shocked Luna as she saw a completely new different being covered in grey armour with a secondary colour of orange details appear and calmly walked over to the golden armoured monster. A black slender object was in its hand and pointed at the monster's face.

From where she lay, Luna could see that the golden monster had a quad-mandible mouth with sharp looking teeth that spread wide and closed rapidly as it angrily spat in the unknown dialect at this new being above it. Luna gazed up higher at the new being and saw its head encased in armour with an orange upside down triangular faceplate that unmovingly stared down at the angered monster.

Maria placed her boot firmly on the elite's chest so that he couldn't get back up or allow his shields to recharge. The infuriated Remnant warrior had then raised his voice that all she could hear was it ramble on about how humanity were hauling stolen technology and death to all not loyal to their cause.

The monster was now shouting at the new armoured being when a pair of the large bipedal birds crept silently into view and blocked off Luna's view of the new being now standing on top of the monster, not unlike the armoured maroon monster had once did to her.

"This worlds surface will be cleansed of your heresy and influence that you have spread upon it!"

"We have spread nothing, you're just as deluded as the ones that came before." Maria replied back using her helmet speakers in a calm and collected voice. Not bothering to shout back and give the Covie fuel for his fire.

Deep down in the back of her mind something triggered off a powerful emotion that she didn't believe was still there, it was an emotion that told Luna that this new armoured being have no harm to be done to it by these approaching bird like animals walking quietly up behind it.

"Do you not see it demon? This world holds the key to your eradication of your pitiful race and to those others that have decided to retaliate against us." The elite continued as the Spartan applied more pressure down on his chest breaking any other remaining ribs that weren't broken when she delivered her kick to its midsection.

Maria was going to reply when something that the Sangheili had said caught in her throat.

'_Others, what others?'_

Luna dredged up any remaining magical energy she had, causing her flowing hair to dissipate to its original form, and fired a blast right into their backs. The spell flung them screeching in surprise across the length of the courtyard, all of their bones shattered on impact with the wall and slid lifelessly to the ground. Exhausted from expending the energy required in the quick action she rested her head back to the ground and closed her eyes, hoping that she had done the right thing.

The sharp sound of breaking bones interrupted Maria's thoughts about what the elite said and looked out through the front door. Outside she saw the strange horse's horn fade accompanied by two lifeless dead skirmishers falling to their sides after colliding with the outside wall.

The Remnant elite took the timely distraction to suddenly grab onto the Spartan's boot on its chest and twisted it in the wrong direction. Maria fell sprawling off the covie as her ankle dislocated, not that serious for a Spartan but it was enough for her not to get back up on her feet and put down the elite now standing above.

"Weak and pathetic." The elite said as he lunged for head of the fallen Spartan with an activated plasma dagger.

The Remnant elite didn't get far as an overcharged plasma bolt collided and stumbled him to his knees allowing a different plasma dagger to quickly enter from the side into his skull, frying his brain.

After having gone through another window by climbing a wall section that collapsed when the plasma grenade in the room he was in detonated. Xytas deactivated his dagger as he revealed the rest of himself from the shadows, the dead body of the elite falling to the floor with a _thud_.

"Thanks." Maria said as she grabbed hold of her dislocated ankle and twisted it the opposite way, the odd sound of _snap click_ when the joint popped back into place.

Michael came out of the hallway that led to the room he had situated himself in, his rifle resting on his shoulder.

"Doesn't that hurt?" He asked.

"A little." Maria looked up and held out her hand towards him.

Michael took her offered hand and hauled her to her feet.

"Now what do we do?" He asked her.

Maria looked out the doorway entrance and her eyes came to rest directly on the strange horse like animal in the middle of the courtyard. The recent words of the dead Remnant elite had said to her echoed through her mind. _'…your eradication of your pitiful race and to those others that have decided to retaliate against us.' _

"A gut feeling about all this." She said as she slowly turned and gazed out the front door.

Michael and Xytas followed their commander's gaze to see what she was looking at.

"You're kidding." Michael said as they stayed and watched Maria walk outside calmly but carefully approached the strange animal still lying awkwardly on its side.

Luna kept her eyes shut. She could no longer feel her wings or some parts of her body. She was no longer scared or frightened but she felt empty inside, it was like if something had been taken and hidden from her. She was surrounded by death and never before seen creatures, some of which were clad heavily in thick armour. She had no familiar friends or ponies nearby to reassure her safety, to reassure her continued existence.

Outside of her thoughts she could hear heavy thudding footsteps of one of the armoured beings coming closer to her. Accepting what it was to soon be, she waited until the noise had stopped and opened her eyes to come face to face with the misshapen triangle orange faceplate of the grey armoured being looking back at her.

Maria knelt to one knee as she observed the animal's strange bright cyan eyes when it opened them. Something about the eyes put her off, they looked overly intelligent and calculating yet in turn they looked calm and at peace, completely the opposite than what she had thought they should have been.

She looked beyond the head and over at the animal's midsection and came across to one of its wings. It was badly crumpled in a term of sense, obviously broken and fractured in multiple places when the elite Zealot had stomped down hard on the wing.

Moving on, she looked towards its rear and spotted a strange marking that adorned part of its rear flank and down the leg, it looked like a symbol of some kind. Out of the corner of her eye Maria noticed the animal horse thing lift its head inquisitively, it must've noticed her overly long interest of the marking.

Looking down to the ground Maria noted there was a large pool of red coloured liquid now beginning to seep from underneath its midsection, it was bleeding quite profusely and it was coming from the other side.

If she could save this thing from bleeding out then maybe they could get a few questions answered. Maria turned and waved to Michael and Xytas over by the doorway to come over then she formed a cross with her hands.

Luna lifted her head to look back at the grey armoured being who had taken a keen interest in her cutie mark she began to sense and feel something very warm and wet touching her body. It hurt just to even think and try to look down underneath her to see what it could be. After finding she couldn't do it, Luna looked back towards the armoured being before her and saw it turn its head suddenly and wave one of its hands towards the castle doors as well as making what seemed to be a plus sign with its hands.

Coming from out of the shadows within and stepping outside, Luna spotted another similar garbed grey-orange armoured being accompanied by something else that was clad in dark wine red armour with a sky blue thin visor_, _this deep red armoured something else then fell into step slightly behind the other.

As the something else came closer, Luna immediately recognised the overall shape and it terrified her. It was one of those horrifying monsters that had attacked and almost ended her life. The monster came and halted a meter in front of her while the other knelt down besides the armoured being as it pulled out a thin black rectangular shaped object and held it out above her.

From what followed next was came a complete shock to Luna when she heard the two armoured beings next to her begin to quickly converse to each other in ancient Equestrian, a language that was phased out thousands of years ago for the more adopted refined language that she and the other ponies currently spoke.

She wasn't educated much into the ancient dialect, her sister was more of the leading expert on the subject along with Discord. Luna was one of three others that knew most of the base words of the language the armoured beings were rapidly conversing fluently to each other in.

Luna began to listen into the conversation the two armoured beings were talking about and found they were talking about who and what she really was.

"How does 'It' look?" Luna heard the one with the misshapen orange triangular visor ask the other being beside it in a feminine voice, a female.

"Well, I can tell you 'It' has the same organs and skeletal structure, barring the three discrepancies of the horn, wings and that marking, as the common species it relates too but," The other being said in a more deeper voice, a male.

"But what?"

"Its body size is smaller than what 'It' should be if comparing the two together."

"Meaning?"

Luna heard the male armoured being audibly sigh in confusion as he continued to sweep over her midsection with the strange rectangular object.

"It looks like this thing is the smaller version of the species."

"So we're talking about a pony here? Not a _horse_."

Luna couldn't translate nor understand the meaning behind one of the words in the sentence when the male armoured being quickly nodded in response as the object in his hand quietly chimed at him.

Maria looked over to Michael who held his medical PDA over the strange pony.

"How bad?"

"Very. From what this is telling me the other wing that is underneath its body is shredded completely along with most of its side," Michael clipped the PDA back onto his belt and held out his hands above the pony.

"We need to roll it over so I can get to the wound and stop the bleeding before this pony thing looses too much blood and could potentially die on us."

Maria readied and held out her hands as she flexed them over the body.

"How well do you think it would react to the anaesthetic in the polymer?"

"Hopefully it will take it just fine. Are you ready?"

She nodded and Michael nodded back as they placed their hands on the ponies back and grabbed hold.

"On my go ok. One… Two…"

"Now!" The two Spartans grunted in exertion as they hauled the pony from the blood soaked ground beneath it.

Tears streamed from Luna's eyes as she roared in intense pain and on impulse tried to kick away the two armoured beings that quickly rolled her from the ground into a kneeling sitting position, the smashed wing that was pinned beneath her body drooped to the ground limply, smothered entirely with her blood.

The monster that was standing in front of her rushed in and steadied her from toppling back as the male armoured being went quickly over to her bleeding side and pulled out a dull green something from within a pouch on its leg.

Michael let go and jumped over the pony as Xytas came in and propped it from the damaged side to stop it falling back over. He took out his knife as well as he reached into his emergency medical kit attached to his left leg and pulled out a small green canister of biofoam and primed it.

Near where the wing connected to the pony's body, Michael saw a large thick piece of needle shard still embedded in the wound that was causing most of the bleeding. He grabbed hold and with the knife he dug in carefully underneath the shard whilst he pulled hard, getting it to slowly slide out.

The pony thing tried to get up and desperately move away but Maria and Xytas held it firmly in place as Michael eventually pulled the long blood covered shard from out of the gash. Now with the shard out of the way, he quickly jammed the nozzle tip into the wound and activated the pressurised can of medical foaming polymer.

It felt like millions of burning ants were crawling around inside of her body as the armoured being over by her damaged wing blocked Luna's view of what it did to her side. The burning pain quickly subsided and she slowly began to feel drowsy and light headed.

"Is it safe to let go?" Luna heard the armoured feminie voiced being asked the other, as she felt little pricks of discomfort along her side.

"Almost, just give me… a few more… there."

Luna heard what sounded like a grinding scraping noise coming from next to her. She looked back to see the male armoured being gripping a large silver blade in its hand dripping red with her blood as he scraped the serrated blade along the ground.

Down on the ground, beside the where the blade was being scraped along, Luna noticed there were multiple little pieces of blood covered pink crystals. The armoured being had taken the crystal shards out of her after what it had done the something near her wing.

The scraping stopped as the male armoured being noticed Luna looking intently at him and the knife. Noticing her interest in the blade, he quickly placed it into a holder on its waist and looked back and spoke directly at her.

"Hi."

Luna didn't stop herself to think as of why she did it but she believed it was the correct time to greet the armoured beings on how they had saved her life. Trying her best to form the word with her mouth she spoke, albeit weakly, back to the armoured being in the ancient Equestrian dialect.

"Hello."

* * *

**Never was it so easy.**

**Yes its long, Yes it was completely brutal to her and Yes I'm going to write each chapter over 12,000 words from here onwards.**

** Its a challenge that I solely accept completely and I eagerly look forward to writing such a long chapter again and again.**

**I'll be back next time with another chapter instalment to add to the story.**

**Don't forget to l****eave a review.**


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